Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Zurich’s Cosmopolitan Choreography

Crossposted from Haaretz

Image by Joseph Asner

Many dance troupes are closely identified with the choreographer and artistic director leading them. But in the case of the Zurich Ballet, it seems that Heinz Spoerli has taken this tendency a step too far. His name appears together with the name of the troupe wherever possible, whether on billboards and in various notices at the troupe’s home base, on the vest he wears, or on the Ballet’s truck in the car park. Spoerli is everywhere, he can’t be missed. Even on the home page of the troupe’s website, among the changing photographs of dancers, his huge portrait suddenly appears.

Spoerli’s troupe, slated to appear in Israel this month, is part of the Zurich Opera House. The Opera’s neoclassical building, a beautiful, elegant edifice of relatively humble dimensions befitting Swiss good taste, graces the banks of Lake Zurich. In the afternoon hours, the building’s lively halls were filled with dancers dressed in athletic outfits and communicating mostly in English, suggesting a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Read more at Haaretz.com

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.