DRESDEN, Germany — David Dawson’s new “Tristan and Isolde” for the Dresden Semperoper Ballett raises interesting questions about the full-length story ballet, a genre much-loved by audiences and seldom tackled by choreographers today.
It’s surprising that the Tristan and Isolde story, a medieval Celtic tale that has long figured in literature, film and in Wagner’s opera of the same name, has been so infrequently used by ballet. Like “Romeo and Juliet,” it has instant attraction and union between lovers from opposing camps, with society and history against them, and tragic death at its end. You can imagine what John Cranko or Kenneth MacMillan, who brought the big, all-guns-blazing story ballets like “Manon” and “Eugene Onegin” to the world in the 1960s and 1970s (ballet box offices are still thanking them), might have done with it.
The British-born Mr. Dawson, who was at the Royal Ballet School with Christopher Wheeldon and has established a strong reputation in Europe, is from another generation. Although he is a skilled classical dance-maker, his sensibility is coolly contemporary, and in this “Tristan and Isolde,” which had its premiere at the Dresden Semperoper on Sunday, he takes a more high-stakes approach. (Mr. Wheeldon has also recently made a new story ballet along more traditional lines, a critically acclaimed version of Shakespeare’s “The Winter Tale.”)
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An earlier version of this article misstated the dates of future performances. It runs through Feb. 26 and on July 6, not through Feb. 25 and on July 6.
A version of this review appears in print on February 18, 2015, in The International New York Times. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
