Mopey

Music

C.P.E. Bach
(Cello Concerto in A minor, Wq. 172, third movement)
and The Cramps
(“Surfin’ Bird”)

Choreography

Marco Goecke

Music

Sean Suozzi (2005)
James Yoichi Moore (2025)

Costume Coordination

Mark Zappone

Lighting Design

David Moodey

Duration

15 minutes

Cast

1 dancer

Premiere

March 16, 2004
Peter Boal and Company (New York)

PNB Premiere

November 3, 2005

PNB’s 2025 performances of Mopey are supported by a generous anonymous donor. The 2005 Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere of Mopey was made possible by Glenn Kawasaki.

Peter Boal met Marco Goecke in 2002 when the young German choreographer was invited to participate in New York City Ballet’s New York Choreographic Institute. Impressed with Goecke’s work for NYCB dancer Sean Suozzi, Boal commissioned a new work for Suozzi for performances by Peter Boal and Company at the Joyce Theater in 2004. Set to music by C.P.E. Bach and the 80’s rock band The Cramps, Mopey is an inwardly reflective yet volatile solo work—dark, moody and potentially unsettling. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times called it “a tour de force” and “a touching piece of alienation,” while Laura Shapiro of New York Magazine praised Suozzi’s interpretation as “riveting in a portrait of madness so eloquent it looked like Shakespeare without words.” In addition to performances by Pacific Northwest Ballet, Mopey has been performed at the Jacob’s Pillow Festival, at the Biennale in Venice and at the 2004 Pina Bausch Festival in Wuppertal.

Notes by Doug Fullington.

Artist Biographies

Marco Goecke

Marco Goecke completed his ballet training in 1988 at the Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung Ballet Academy in Munich as well as at the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague, where he received his diploma in 1995. Engagements followed at the Berlin State Opera and Theater Hagen. There, in 2000 Goecke created his first choreographic work, entitled Loch. Several choreographic works followed for the Noverre-Society with dancers from the Stuttgart Ballet, and an invitation to the New York Choreographic Institute. In July 2003 Goecke won the Prix Dom Pérignon in Hamburg with the piece Blushing, danced by the Stuttgart Ballet.

In the 2005/2006 season Marco Goecke was appointed Choreographer in Residence at the Stuttgart Ballet, and it was there in December 2006 that he created his first narrative ballet The Nutcracker, which was later also filmed for the ZDF Theatre channel. From 2006 to 2012 Goecke also held the post of Choreographer in Residence at the Scapino Ballet in Rotterdam. Since the 2013/2014 season he has been Associate Choreographer at the renowned Nederlands Dans Theater. Between 2019 and 2023 he was Artist in Residence with Gauthier Dance Stuttgart and held the position as Artistic Director of the State Ballet Hannover.

Goecke has received several international awards, including the Culture Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 2005, the Nijinsky Award in Monte Carlo in 2006, the Choreographer of the Year in the critics’ survey by the magazine Tanz in 2015, and the Dutch dance prize Zwaan as well as the Italian prize Danzadanza for the best choreography of the year in 2017.

In 2022 he was awarded with the Jiří-Kylián-Ring and the German Dance Prize 2022.

The book Dark Matter (Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg), published in 2016, offers a concise overview of his oeuvre.

His most recent successful works include the full-length piece A Wilde Story based on the life and work of the author Oscar Wilde for the Staatsballett Hannover and In The Dutch Mountains for the Nederlands Dans Theater created in 2023.