Ruhrtriennale 2012: A Great Success. Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury: Opening Production 2013

Heiner Goebbels, the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale 2012/2013/2014 and Lukas Crepaz, managing director, Kultur Ruhr GmbH, take stock of Ruhrtriennale 2012, which ended this past weekend, September 29/30, 2012 with the Children’s Choice Awards and Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto’s audio-visual concert utp_ at Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle. In the first year under the direction of the composer and director Heiner Goebbels, Ruhrtriennale brought 900 artists from around the world to the Ruhrtriennale from August 17 to September 30, 2012.

Over 30 productions, including around 20 world premieres, new productions and German premieres, and many more concerts and guest performances transformed the outstanding industrial monuments of the region into spectacular venues for music, art, theater, dance, and performance.

Around 50,000 guests attended the productions in 2012, while around 7000 came to see the live art exhibition 12 Rooms. Overall, festival events were 85 percent booked. In addition, 13,000 visitors provided their heartbeat for the light installation Pulse Park. Still not counted: the numerous visitors to Our CenturY, an installation around Jahrhunderthalle Bochum.

Many performances were sold out, including the opening production Europeras 1&2, enfant by Boris Charmatz, the concerts of the Boredoms, utp_, and Mandelring Quartett, En Atendant, Sacré Sacre du Printemps, and Disabled Theater, as well as individual performances FOLK., Prolog, and Soapéra. The most visited production in 2012 was Carl Orff’s Prometheus, staged by Lemi Ponifasio at Duisburg’s Kraftzentrale, with over 4,500 tickets sold.

Ruhrtriennale 2013: Opening with Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury

To kick off the 2013 season, Ruhrtriennale will present Harry Partch’s key work Delusion of the Fury (1965–66) as a European premiere.

Harry Partch was one of the most original artists and musicians of the twentieth century and one of the first composers to work almost exclusively with microtonality, developing an unusual music that with a poetic subtlety, rhythmic pulse, and non-academic sense of humor that recalls music from another unknown culture.

Not only did he develop a highly complex sound system, he also designed and constructed during the course of his life an extensive array of instruments of idiosyncratic beauty to perform this music. The partner of the Ruhrtriennale is the ensemble musikFabrik. For this new production staged by Heiner Goebbels, the instruments will be rebuilt and members of Ensemble musikFabrik will learn to play them.

Ruhrtriennale 2013 will begin on August 23 and end on October 6, 2013.