Voluntaries

With Voluntaries, Glen Tetley creates a ballet that is both a spiritual journey and a physical odyssey. Premiered in 1973 for Stuttgart Ballet, the piece is a poignant tribute to John Cranko, who had passed away the year before. It embodies Tetley’s choreographic and intellectual complexity while offering a raw exploration of grief and transcendence.

From the opening moments, the ballet imposes its atmosphere: a weighty silence, an absence that reverberates. Then, with a jarring crash, the first chord of Poulenc’s Concerto in G Minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani pierces the space. A figure emerges from the shadows, body straining toward the light, arms tracing vast circles as if grasping for the unreachable. Poulenc’s music, composed during a period when he moved away from youthful exuberance toward a near-sacred gravity, unfolds in waves—by turns crushing and ethereal. In moments, an almost carnivalesque lightness surfaces, echoes of the Parisian theaters of the 1920s and 30s.

Tetley fuses classical and modern dance with rare virtuosity. Voluntaries demands an ardent physicality, pushing dancers to their limits. They must merge the ethereal elevation of ballet with the visceral grounding of contemporary movement. Motion emerges from deep within the body, surging forth with urgency while maintaining an appearance of spontaneity. A recurring motif structures the choreography: a living cross, arms outstretched, head thrown back—an evocative image of the Crucifixion. This serves as a pivot between two states of being: soaring leaps where dancers defy gravity, propelled by thunderous timpani and organ swells, and introspective moments magnified by the orchestra’s lyrical passages.

Voluntaries is a work of liberation and ascension. In music, a "voluntary" is an organ improvisation, often played in religious services. The word’s Latin root suggests both flight and desire. This dual meaning deeply resonates in Tetley’s piece, where dance becomes a ritual of rebirth—a testament to the human spirit’s resilience in the face of loss.

Transcending the boundaries of dance, Tetley turns Voluntaries into an experience as much as a performance. For dancers, it is an initiation, a physical and emotional trial. For the audience, it is a meditation on memory, mourning, and the life force that compels the body to rise and leap—again and again—toward the light.