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The new director of the Wiener Staatsballett, Alessandra Ferri, will take a significantly different course than her predecessor. Her first season begins next September. Most notably, the successor to Martin Schläpfer (who had replaced Manuel Legris in 2020) will not stage any of her own works. Under Schläpfer, the company with its 101 dancers, spread across two houses — the Staatsoper and the Volksoper — was led according to an artist-centered model. Although this model had already been flagging under Renato Zanella (1995–2005), the director of the Staatsoper, Bogdan Roščić, nevertheless wanted to test it again. But it soon became clear that this corresponded even less to the very specific reality of ballet in Vienna today. The company's range of possibilities is simply too narrow to ...