An ORF New Year’s concert ballet full of premieres: debuts for choreographer Cathy Marston and costume designer Patrick Kinmonth
New locations and so many new additions to the Vienna State Ballet – concert broadcast on 1. January, 11.15 a.m. on ORF 2 and on ORF ON
For the New Year’s Day Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic on 1. January 2025, the ORF once again pre-produced the traditional New Year’s concert ballet. Already at the end of the summer, two special dance performances were filmed, which are presented to the TV audience during the live broadcast (from 11.15 a.m., ORF 2 and ORF ON) for selected concert pieces. The two dance numbers, presented by ensemble members of the Vienna State Ballet, were created to works of the musical year regent Johann Strauss Sohn, whose 200. Birthday 2025 is celebrated: to the Polka schnell op. 403 “Either-or” and to the “Accelerations-Waltz” op. 234.
Two special locations served as filming locations, where there has not yet been danced for the New Year’s concert: The imposing locomotive 12.10 in the Technical Museum in Vienna for the polka and the rooms of the Südbahnhotel, which became famous above all by the Semmeringbahn, for the waltz. Both places stand for an important theme in the life of the entire Strauss family, because without trains and the modern railway system, which also celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2025, the rapid success of the musician dynasty would hardly have been conceivable.
The British Cathy Marston, who has also been director of the Ballet Zürich since the previous year, makes her debut as choreographer of the New Year’s Concert Ballet 2025. The Anglo-Irish stage and costume designer, director and universal artist Patrick Kinmonth also celebrates his premiere at the New Year’s concert ballet. The two have worked together several times.
Cinematic approach with unique narrative dance language
“The audience can look forward to a playful, musical and visually beautiful start to the year 2025,” promises choreographer Cathy Marston. The Briton likes to work with narratives to bring out emotions in dance. The shooting locations gave her enough inspiration for this. Each place offered its own history: the trains and other vehicles in the Technikmuseum, and in the Südbahnhotel it was the building itself. There it almost felt like the building had to be the main character in our film, because the echos of the past were clearly noticeable there,” says Marston. “I was very happy that Patrick Kinmonth, with whom I work regularly, was there, and so together we began to come up with a world and a ‘story’ for each dance.”
“The places have inspired us to discover stories that arose from the confrontation with the giant steam railway in the museum and a story about love and the choice of the partner in the romantically decaying hotel,” adds Patrick Kinmonth, who frequently works internationally as an opera director, stage and costume designer for opera and ballet productions, creative director for British Vogue, curator, publicist, designer, interior decorator, photographer and painter. Together with Cathy Marston, the jack of all trades has so far realised full-length ballets as well as shorter ballet productions: “Always with a cinematic approach, which is promoted by Cathy’s unique narrative dance language,” says Kinmonth.
Mechanical ballet, romantic adventure and innovative materials
Cathy Marston explains her choreography concept. “The polka became a dance about the mechanics of both the great steam engine, which we chose as a backdrop, and the mechanics of the ballet. The joints, levers and push-pull movements, as well as pressure and relaxation, are part of both the pull systems and the technique of ballet,” says Marston. And adds: “The waltz developed into an adventure around the Südbahnhotel, in which different characters in the truest sense of the word emerge from the different walls of the different rooms and each take on the character of the room together.”
Even though Patrick Kinmonth usually directs and designs entire productions including stage design and costumes, he has focussed entirely on the dance costumes at the New Year’s concert. “The production of costumes for ballet is a very creative interface between the requirements of the dancers’ body, the visual language necessary to communicate the meaning and intent of the dance, and something indefinable, namely the unique expressive quality of the dance itself,” says Kinmonth.
And: “In this project, I was very interested in making the materials innovative, and of course the explosive spread of sportswear in fashion means that there are many more high-tech materials to work with. For the first dance inlay, I used materials that play with the idea of industrial surfaces, inspired by the locomotive, which is our chosen background. For the second piece, I worked with the greatest possible variants of weight, colour, texture and performance, using computer-generated digital image symbolism on the one hand and absolutely traditional hand embroidery on the other.
Dancers like Olympic athletes
A total of 14 members of the Vienna State Ballet stood in front of the ORF camera: well-known soloists, but also very young ensemble members who are present at the New Year’s Concert Ballet for the first time. Four pairs present the waltz: Elena Bottaro, Davide Dato, Sonia Dvořák, Masayu Kimoto, Alice Firenze, Victor Cagnin, Rashaen Arts and Kristián Pokorný. The polka is danced by four ladies and two men: Sveva Gargiulo, Sinthia Liz, Laura Cislaghi, Natalya Butchko, Trevor Hayden and Andrés Garcia Torres.
The New Year’s Day Concert
You can watch the New Year’s Day Concert here
The New Year’s Day Concert details
The Concert is 3 hours and 29 minutes.
Vienna Philharmonic
Riccardo Muti (conductor)
Broadcast live from the Musikverein, Vienna
Presented by Petroc Trelawny
Part 1
Johann Strauss Sr: Freedom March op. 226
Josef Strauss: Village Swallows of Austria, Waltz, op. 164
Johann Strauss: Demolition Men’s Polka, op. 269
Johann Strauss: Lagoon Waltz op. 411
Eduard Strauss: Airy and Fragrant, Polka, op. 206
Interval
Part 2
Johann Strauss: Overture to The Gypsy Baron
Johann Strauss: Accelerations Waltz, op. 234
Joseph Hellmesberger: Jolly Brothers March from The Violet Girl
Constanze Geiger: Ferdinandus Waltz (Arrangement: Wolfgang Dörner)
Johann Strauss: Either Or! Polka, op. 403
Josef Strauss: Transactions Waltz, op. 184
Johann Strauss: Annen-Polka. op. 117
Johann Strauss: Tritsch-Tratsch Polka op. 214
Johann Strauss: Wine, Women and Song, Waltz, op. 333
Encores
Johann Strauss: The Bayadère, Polka, op. 351
Johann Strauss: The Blue Danube, Waltz, op. 314
Johann Strauss Sr: Radetzky-March. op. 228
The Concert tickets for 2026
The process is outlined here
And finally …
The orchestra say the concert is a New Year’s Day greeting to people all over the world in the spirit of hope, friendship and peace at the start of 2025.
