Hannibal’s dream

Hannibal came from the mighty ancient city of Carthage, today a suburb of the capital of Tunisia where only the ruins of the old Punic Empire remain. It was from here, the North African coast, that the famed general Hannibal set out to cross the Alps from north to south – a journey that was still anchored in the collective common knowledge some 2,200 years later.

In 218 BC, Hannibal crossed a pass, probably in present-day France, with more than fifty thousand soldiers on foot, nine thousand horsemen, and 37 war elephants to forestall a Roman attack on Spain. Ernst Lorenzi decided to retell this story in the Austrian winter sports community of Sölden, Tyrol, in what has become a legendary, large-scale Alpine theatrical spectacle. The idea came to him on a mountain peak a quarter of a century ago: “I saw the sunset up there, then the full moon rose, and I thought to myself: People are really poor if they can’t see this beautiful backdrop. They only ever look up as far as the tips of their skis.’”

Lepka was happy to be part of Lorenzi’s endeavor. He says: “The mountains play the role of the obstacle, but also represent the sublime gods who are enthroned above everything.” Together with companies such as Bergbahnen and Tourismus Sölden, Red Bull, and director Hubert Lepka’s artist network Lawine Torrèn, Ernst Lorenzi established the three pillars of the event in 2001, and the spectacle has taken place every two years since. The tourism industry quickly realized how great the advertising power of an art event can be.

Of course, a meticulously choreographed spectacle like “Hannibal” is not causing the ice melt or climate change. However, it takes place before the visible melting as a precisely balanced cultural event that has been rehearsed for weeks and is only possible thanks to the involvement of the local population and the participation of numerous volunteers. In fact, everyone in Sölden seems to be involved somehow and to participate with palpable enthusiasm. Many families, some of them now in the second generation, are involved in the production, both up on the glacier and down in the village. Two of the local ski schools contribute their best teachers, mountain guides ensure safety in the Alpine terrain, and experts create snow sculptures such as an imposing elephant and the warship with the impressive, god-like head every two years. If you ask about the importance of the production in Sölden, you will hear the proud response: “We are Hannibal!”

The three hundred participants act based on a precisely written storyboard, coordinated by several operations managers who are responsible for the vehicles, ski actors, projections, and everything that moves in the air. Only the weather, an important and sometimes spontaneously changing element in this microclimate, cannot be coordinated. Sudden gusts of wind are dangerous. According to flight director Hans Huemer, the uncompromising rule here is: “Safety first!” – which means that paragliders, for example, sometimes have to cancel their flights from the mountain ridge at short notice.

Located on the finishing slope of the Glacier World Cup course, the central stage element of “Hannibal” is a snow pyramid around twenty meters high. This is also the case for this year’s performance – the 16th in 23 years. It is the beginning of April. The walls of the pyramid are reinforced with formwork elements, between which snow is thrown and heavily compacted. This makes the material almost as hard as concrete, and chainsaws are then used to carve the steps. The warlike clashes between the mythological Romans and Punics take place directly in front of the pyramid, enacted using a host of alpine means of transportation and their pilots: Snow groomers, skidoos, motocross machines, (propeller) skis and snowboards, with mountain guides lighting up the slopes, parachutists dropping out of the darkness, paragliders, helicopters and historic propeller planes making the air vibrate. The show gets off to a festive start with a tuba solo played from the top of the pyramid, followed by emotional film music by Peter Valentin.

Timing and coordination among all those involved are the key to this production. But the weather makes it difficult to open the lock. This year, days of storms and snowfall over Easter hampered preparations and rehearsals. Gondola operations were suspended and the glacier access road was closed.

Preparations for “Hannibal” therefore begin many weeks before the performance. For example, a separate path is prepared on the hill for the 37 snow groomers, whose night-time journey makes the enormous dimensions of the mountain tangible in the shine of the spotlights.

Director Hubert Lepka created this and almost all of his productions about the triad of man, machine, and nature with his company Lawine Torrèn, founded in 1992. “We treat everything that is real with the utmost respect,” he says: “And, of course, the Rettenbach Glacier, which we cherish in all its natural beauty, plays a part.” Natural environments and landscapes have always been expressive backdrops for his works, in which he exposes human bodies to extreme situations and sometimes even danger, making them vulnerable and strong at the same time. But is “Hannibal” really still contemporary? Lepka answers: “From the very beginning, our ‘Hannibal’ was received as a significant work of contemporary Austrian dance art. I find the question of whether a work of art is contemporary to be somewhat outmoded. My work usually takes place in large landscapes and brings people and their machines into a choreographed relationship with nature. The constantly moving glacier is part of this choreography. We don’t play on the glacier, but in front of it. The performance takes place exclusively on areas that have already been developed for the ski resort.”

Some of the participants have been with the company since the beginning; others, such as the young Belgian dancer Jeanne Procureur, are newcomers.

She is taking part in “Hannibal” for the first time in 2024 in the role of Venus. But the role itself is not the only premiere for her: She has never before delivered a performance on a rope under a flying helicopter.

Procureur remembers the beginning of her tenure very clearly. The production’s lighting designer, Frank Lischka, bluntly asked her if she was confident enough to hang from a helicopter and dance… Director Hubert Lepka later told her just as bluntly that, as Venus, she would be picked up high up on the mountainside by an army helicopter and then brought to the stage suspended from a rope and wearing a billowing red cape. Her “inner voice,” she says, was alarmed. At the same time, she sensed that she would regret it forever if she didn’t accept this once in a lifetime offer.

Jeanne Procureur studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) for four years and is now a member of the associated Bodhi Project Dance Company, with which she tours and gives workshops. She arrives at her starting position on the steep slope on skis that she hasn’t used for ages because the risk of injury is too great. Now she waits almost an hour in the snow until she is picked up by the helicopter – all broadcast live on the video wall at the event site.

It is the day of the dress rehearsal: Accompanied by Hannibal veteran Tomaz Simatovic, who descends upside down by helicopter, she is attached to the rope with hooks. The downwash from the helicopter whirls icy chunks of snow through the air.

Her chic red sequined costume lends her both protection and glamor. She describes flying along the mountain face as “incredible and sensational.” She raves that it feels “as if you’re floating, as if you’re flying yourself,” directly under the helicopter, in the slipstream. That’s how windless it is there. It is not easy for her to concentrate on the choreography because she “just wants to be a child and smile,” which is not compatible with the “strong, wild, angry figure of Venus.” Hanging from a rope above the audience, she celebrates her goddess-like power with a fluttering, long red cape, her feet in high heels, her body full of superwoman gestures, until she descends to earth in sequined armor like a diva. The audience watches her performance via a live video transmission from the perspective of the red-hot, illuminated entry point high up on the glacier.

Jeanne Procureur tries to make the landing on the pitch “as graceful as possible.” But this stunt is not enough for the 25-year-old: She then dances in the ensemble and at the front. Her position is on the top step of the snow pyramid in the cold wind of the generators, brightly illuminated by the spotlights: “You can’t lose your bearings, but once you’ve acclimatized, it’s a really crazy affair. You’re dancing with and against the mountain, trying to make the movements as big as possible.”

The choreography for the piece was created by Detroit-born Donna Jewell. A multi-award-winning cheerleader, she initially studied and taught history, only embarking on a solid dance education at the late age of 24. A multi-award-winning cheerleader, she initially studied and taught history, only embarking on a solid dance education at the late age of 24. In 1994, she came to Salzburg to teach at the local dance academy. It was here that Hubert Lepka suddenly sat in on her class with colleagues to get to know the artist, who was new to the region. Since then, she has worked as a choreographer and performer in some of the works of his artist network Lawine Torrèn. She appreciates Lepka’s very unique and much-discussed aesthetic. Jewell understands his approach, his closeness to nature, no matter how many machines or animals he uses. She appreciates how he engages with the competition that lies in the impressive natural world, which always acts as a manifestation of man as an eminent part of the world: “His approach can be very joyful, showing how beautiful this world is, but also that we are very vulnerable.” Over the years, she has observed that Lepka increasingly emphasizes this vulnerability of bodies and people by creating ever more dangerous settings for his plays. For example, in “Hannibal,” when the dancers prove themselves amid jumping skidoos (motorcycles racing on skids) and surrounded by motocross machines and snowcats spinning wildly in circles under rotating helicopters in a choreographed group battle on snow and ice. It seems to send a message: “We can get through this if we stick together.”

Donna Jewell thinks back to 2001, when she was at the Rettenbach Glacier for the first time and created the choreography for the piece: “I came here a few days earlier and spent a lot of time on the pyramid to find out how I could best use the step structure. I thought about North Africa, about Hannibal’s origins, about dancing positions reminiscent of hieroglyphics. That was what I was going for.”

In order to make the choreography stand out in the open-air environment, Donna Jewell relies on clear and sweeping movements, which are hidden in the faux fur costumes with their defined contours and make the human figure appear larger. In contrast to the flowing movements at which dancers excel, Donna Jewell demands accuracy and angular stops. For her, this is “a movement design that also works when seen from a distance.”

Like the entire “Hannibal” team, the dance company has an international cast. Since Donna Jewell started teaching as a professor at the University of New Mexico, she has been bringing selected students to the production on the glacier every two years – from the desert to the alpine ice. For some, it was the first time they had seen so much snow… The important thing is that they can cope with the physical work up on the glacier. Everything is much more strenuous there – at least in the first few days. Another prerequisite is that they “learn really quickly and are precise,” as rehearsal time is extremely tight. There is only one performance every two years. For Donna Jewell, the days in the Tyrolean Alps are therefore always characterised by a special team spirit and situations that are unlikely to be found anywhere else. During the manoeuvre critique, she warns her dancers: ‘Make sure you don’t throw any snowballs at the piste bullies.’ And laughs in conversation: ‘What other dance rehearsal would you ever say that at?’

But it’s not just the work on site that is extraordinary. The special conditions put many a situation in the choreographer’s everyday life on stage into perspective: “When I come back to the theater and go on stage, it feels really easy because I don’t have to deal with any of the things I encounter in ‘Hannibal.’ When I’m at the theater and someone says desperately: ‘Oh, I don’t know where my spike is…’ I reply quite succinctly: ‘Oh, you have no idea how easy it is to dance on a real stage’.”

Marion Hackl and Ekke Hager have been part of the Rettenbach Glacier production from the very beginning, playing Dido, Queen of Carthage, and her lover Aeneas, who washed ashore from Troy.

A lot has changed in these almost 25 years; many things have become more professional and also a little more comfortable. For example, there is the grandstand, in whose upper rooms members of the press usually sit and comment at ski races as they view the finish; this had not yet been built in 2001. The “Hannibal” team uses these heated rooms as a checkroom, for make-up, and as accommodation. Hackl describes the first few years as “pioneering work,” on which today’s performance is based: “None of us were great skiers and we weren’t at all prepared for what this extreme altitude does to you.” Every two years since then, she has embarked on this special flow on the mountain, which arises from the extraordinary team spirit.

In the role of Dido, Hackl makes love to her Aeneas in a bed suspended along the sloping outer edge of the pyramid. It is no mean feat in this steep, exposed position: “It’s an artistic challenge because it requires a certain intimacy with Aeneas and then it is followed by her sudden decision to commit suicide. So on the one hand it’s something very private, but on the other it also has to have this external impact – a balancing act between not overacting and still presenting it in a dramatic way. It has to be authentic and coherent, just as it would be on a normal stage, and it has to transfer well to the screen, but it still has to be visible to the naked eye.”

The Bavarian actress recalls a bizarre feature of the first production in 2001: real elephants were used on the glacier. “That didn’t go down well with the animal rights activists and ended up being discontinued. Instead, there has been a large white model of an elephant from an opera production at the Salzburg Festival for a few years now.” For her, using the surprisingly agile PistenBully snow groomers to play Hannibal’s elephants is perfectly fitting for Hubert Lepka’s tech-savvy productions, in which even a helicopter “takes on a life of its own” and can easily be interpreted as a dragonfly. “I have learned to appreciate the grandiosity of this technical equipment. The snow groomers are exciting animals per se, and when they wiggle their snow cannons like fins, they look like very special, fascinating creatures.”

Like some of the team, Marion Hackl has also worked on other productions by Lawine Torrèn over the years, such as “Friedl of the empty pockets.” For ten years, they performed this “alpine drama” in late summer, a little further back in the Ötztal valley, right at the head of the valley above the idyllic village of Vent. Set in the 15th century with the audience wandering along, the piece is a kind of quiet, intimate counterpart to “Hannibal,” which is staged with a lot of external impact and show, she says. The story of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps from Carthage is narrated off-screen by of TV actor Harald Krassnitzer. It is not always easy to follow the fairy-tale style, which is also due to the mannerisms in Joey Wimplinger’s texts, especially when there is always something to see all around. Nevertheless, the stories with their subtle satirical allusions, combined with mythological pathos, create an independent linguistic melody and the rhythm that goes with it.

Only the presenter of Karthago TV, choreographer Donna Jewell, and her guests take the floor in person – a directorial trick that turns the protagonists into personalities, into individual characters. Donna Jewell describes her role as follows: “I report on Hannibal’s activities in the world as a newsreader. I also have a talk show to which I invite General Hamilcar, Hannibal’s father. Later, I interview Scipio and Hannibal.” This interview takes place on the eve of the ‘decisive battle,’ the necessity of which Hannibal questions. During this conversation, two completely contrasting characters meet: Hannibal, who is calm and collected, and his Roman opponent Scipio, who is quick-tempered, provocative and mentally conspicuous. The short scene is designed accordingly: “It was supposed to be like a big wrestling match, an interview that’s a bit over the top. Hannibal comes across as a fairly self-confident character, a bit older and a bit tired of the same old story of attack and military strategy. Scipio, on the other hand, is like a young punk trying to prove himself – he’s not as pleasant or as confident.”

With only one performance every two years, “Hannibal” is a crowd-puller. But the audience members, who travel by shuttle bus from all over Tyrol via the glacier road to attend the event, have changed, says Donna Jewell: “Twenty years ago, people were screaming, literally shouting with joy and excitement as the avalanche was finally triggered. Now everyone has their cell phones with their little lights shining in the audience. They are all filming the show and looking at their tiny square in front of them. They should put down their cell phones, open their eyes, and take in the mountain massif, because that’s what makes it so special. We perform on a pyramid of snow and ice, we make an effort and want the audience to be completely with us – fully conscious and present!” The story takes place in many historical locations, near Rome, in the Alps, on the North African coast. And nothing about Hannibal’s adventures with his vast army from Europe and Africa and his elephants is explained directly to the uninitiated audience. They are far more fascinated by a cinemascope experience featuring three hundred performers playing out a choreography like an adventure on an area spanning some six cubic kilometers amid a lofty alpine theatrical landscape as dusk falls. Explosions can be heard along the mountain ridge in the darkness of the night as fireworks are set off deliberately. People on skis slalom down the open terrain with Bengal flares. An avalanche thunders down. The power of the mountain massif at 3,000 meters above sea level is now completely palpable. Snow groomers trail one after the other further and further up into the barely recognizable heights, led by light-projected elephants that give an impression of the dimensions of the mountain massif.

And then everything culminates in the breathtakingly spectacular battle scene. The snow groomers pirouette like the riders of old, motocross riders leap over jumps with screeching engines as if over their opponents, skidoos fly up high, and the dancers fight in the middle of it all. Everything within the space is condensed by snow cannons and wind machines into an icy showdown that can also be felt by those standing in the front row of the audience. The helicopter is deployed with its roaring rotor blades and icy downwash. Hannibal swallows poison and disappears into the sky, hanging upside down from a rope.

The glaciers are shrinking Perhaps it was no coincidence that the Austrian Alpine Association’s press conference on glacier shrinkage took place on 5 April. Their length has decreased by an average of 24 metres in the last year. The Rettenbachferner in the Ötztal Alps is in second place among the 93 glaciers measured, with a loss of 127 metres.

It is an issue of which the producers of “Hannibal” are well aware, and which has also manifested itself in the ongoing change of scenery for the piece: While elephants carved into the ice were an attraction in the early years, only a small remnant of the carved wall can be seen today. Last September, Greenpeace caused a stir when it reported that the glacier was being destroyed by excavators and that blasting had even been carried out. At the same time, the governing bodies behind the Alpine Ski World Cup fundamentally questioned whether the season should start in October. The necessary discussions continue, although the German Ski Association has tried to reassure people, at least with regard to the work on the glacier, that only stones had been crushed in order to keep snowmaking to a minimum. When asked about his personal position on this matter, Hubert Lepka says: “Climate change is a reality and affects society as a whole, worldwide. We are all responsible. It is visible first and foremost on sea coasts and glaciers, but is also noticeable from the temperature of thirty degrees measured up here on April 7th. The inhabitants of the Ötztal valley are aware of the value of their glaciers; they know their dynamics and they will do everything in their power to preserve this jewel as best they can.”

As a director, he says with conviction: “My work is always designed as a partnership between people, machines, and nature: We treat everything that is real with the utmost respect. In ‘Hannibal,’ the Rettenbach Glacier, which we cherish in all its natural beauty, plays a part.” 25 years ago, he deliberately chose a glacier for this story: “In ‘Hannibal,’ we deal with the Second Punic War and read it as a warning against the illusion that history is over.”

“At the same time, this play, ‘Hannibal,’ can also be understood as a self-empowerment of the valley,” which for Lepka is particularly meaningful in the light of global political developments of recent years: “When I studied the material more closely at the end of the 1990s, I realized how close the world was to a fork in the road at the time of Hannibal’s crossing – 218 BC. It was not clear that the Roman Empire would become the cultural driving force for the next two thousand years; things could have turned out differently. The Phoenicians who ruled Carthage were a culturally well-established force in the Mediterranean. Phoenician culture could easily have gained the upper hand, and if that had happened, we would probably find ourselves in a completely different environment today. Nothing would be the same as it is now and that is possibly only because Hannibal, standing in front of Rome, asked himself: ‘What will we gain by taking Rome? We can’t do anything with it.’ I think that should happen to us too.”