The Enduring Appeal of Vienna’s Gilded-Age Balls
JULY 2, 2024
The Reporter’s Notebook is our monthly interview series with Dial contributors. To receive these conversations directly in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
✺
A conversation with Jessi Jezewska Stevens, whose article on Vienna’s ball season was published in our Land issue.
Every year, thousands of people dress up in hoop skirts and tuxedos and descend upon Vienna’s 400 winter balls. For our Land issue, Dial contributor Jessi Jezewska Stevens attended three of these events — the Science Ball, the Coffee Brewers’ Ball and the Opera Ball — to understand the cultural and political significance of the tradition. “On a continent that relishes golden-era traditions yet finds itself slipping in the geopolitical world order, how do you face the future without romanticizing the past?” Jezewska Stevens asks. Dial intern Onofrio De Michele spoke with Jezewska Stevens about the temporality of Vienna’s balls, caught between the pull of tradition and the push of modernity, as well as her perspective on how the celebrations fit into Europe’s shifting political landscape.
THE DIAL: You write that the balls are “decidedly Viennese.” What do you mean by this? And as an American citizen who moved to Europe and has reported across the continent, how do you think Austrian culture compares to that in other European countries?
JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS: The balls are distinctly Viennese in the sense that while other countries may have a form of debutante culture or an appreciation for classical music and dance, no other European country has this tradition of the winter ball season, with its hundreds of events. The balls also have a regalness and an aura of the Austro-Hungarian empire that feels very specific to Vienna. The former imperial palace is a favorite venue, for example.
Austria is very interesting today because it is a small, wealthy country, but it has this unique post-war legacy because of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire. That was one of the reasons I was interested in looking into the balls, and into Austria in particular. As we just saw in the results of the EU parliamentary elections in June, many countries are seeing a shift to the right, Austria included, and this shift seems motivated in part by a sense of nostalgia that’s related to perceptions of European decline. (Viktor Orbán, for example, just announced his plans to “Make Europe Great Again.”) I was interested in what the Austrian context, and in particular these traditional balls, could tell us about a broader European mood.
THE DIAL: The annual protest of the Opera Ball by the Communist Youth of Austria, which you report has gained increasing prominence alongside the Opera Ball itself, is a disruption to the tradition. How do you think this and other protests influence public perception of the high-profile cultural events?
JJS: I would say the protests are actually an integral part of these events, which was very interesting to look into. Particularly after World War II, they’ve expressed another important tradition in Vienna (though it is not unique to the city) of arguing for class equality, inclusion, and socialist values.
Typically, it’s mostly young people who participate in these protests. I spoke to a number of older guests who had at one time participated in the protests only to later in their careers be invited to the Opera Ball, which is an especially rarified event. I found it interesting that some people had both perspectives — of having protested the event and also attended it.
There’s something to be said, I think, for the balls acting as an outlet or a site for political expression. They create a space for people to express a desire for better public housing, for example — one of the main demands of the protesters of the Opera Ball this year. It’s interesting to reflect on the ways the decadence of the event can belie its public functions.
The annual protest against the Academics’ Ball, by contrast, stands against the rise of far-right extremism. That ball is sponsored by the right-wing, nativist Freedom Party (FPÖ).
THE DIAL: How did you approach writing about a tradition as old and prestigious as Vienna’s ball season? As you navigated your role as both an observer and an outsider, who did you gravitate toward as you spoke to attendees?
JJS: I had a lot of off-the-record conversations with people about growing up in Vienna and their experience of attending the balls or dancing schools. That was an important first step for me, because most coverage of the balls — not only in English but also in German — focuses on the celebrities and all of the glitz and the scandals around these events. I wanted to speak with people about their experience of the balls in previous generations, and to current high schoolers and college students who are going to dance lessons in preparation for these events. That gave me the background to take the story out of the clickbait context.
When I was at the balls, I gravitated toward people who seemed especially excited to be there, perhaps because it was their first ball. I was interested in what motivates someone to attend for the first time, as opposed to someone for whom it’s a long-standing family tradition. I thought that would also illuminate how the balls are shifting over time and what appeal they hold for someone who is perhaps not already entrenched in these traditions.
I was surprised by how many young people still attend the balls, since the tradition from the outside in many ways seems outmoded, and made an effort to speak to as many young people as I could. I hadn’t expected them to take so enthusiastically to the traditional aspects.
I also went out of my way to talk to the caterers, the freelance make-up artists, the taxi drivers and the ushers to get a sense of the broader economics of these events. For these constituencies the balls obviously have effects far beyond the pomp and circumstance.
Because I’m primarily a novelist, I was also tuned-in to details that distill the atmosphere, i.e. an orphaned ostrich feather on the parquet — but also a DJ playing techno in a former imperial ballroom.
THE DIAL: One of the attendees you met at Opera Ball said the events offered a sort of escapism from thinking about issues such as war or poverty. Yet, 10 percent of the ball’s revenues were earmarked for charity. What do you make of that?
JJS: One of the challenges in writing this piece was to keep the reporting observational and very close to the Viennese spirit of the balls, while also staying alive to the ways in which these events might help us understand a broader European moment. And to me, the comment from that guest was a clear sign that there’s a kind of double consciousness going on — that people know Europe is still wealthy and that they continue to enjoy a high quality of life, but feel a growing sense of pessimism and fear, maybe even responsibility. It came up in numerous conversations with guests at the ball, who mentioned their despair over climate change and the war in Ukraine, among other issues.
The guest’s comment came unprompted — I hadn’t asked him whether the balls provide an escape from the news cycle. I thought the nervousness behind that comment, and around the local media’s coverage of the decadence of the balls in general, seemed to resonate with this broader uncertainty across Europe.
THE DIAL: How, if at all, do you see the ball season developing over time? What are some of the new challenges it faces? Or what are some traditions that you see evolving, like the gender-neutral dress code?
JJS: That’s another important aspect of the balls — that they can act as an outlet or a kind of petri dish for introducing new cultural values into traditional contexts. A good example of this was the Life Ball, which was founded in the nineties to raise awareness about the AIDS crisis.
When I was speaking with younger debutantes and high school students in attendance, some suggested the balls aren’t as diverse as they might hope. But they also thought it was entirely possible that in a decade or so from now there would be more class and racial diversity, as well as more members from immigrant communities. There is this idea that the balls can grow up with them to reflect the cultural values of their generation.
That said, it also depends on the ball. They each have their own personality, and while some make an effort to evolve, others remain perhaps more traditional and more closely associated with a different part of the political spectrum. The Academics’ Ball, for example, isn’t likely to make overtures to a more pluralist guest list — but its nativist associations are the reason it also draws the biggest protest of the season.
THE DIAL: As you put it, Europe seems to be pulled between age-old traditions and the need to adapt to modern times. Do you think this tension can ever be resolved? Is Austria’s reluctance to discard old ideas unique?
JJS: The balls were a useful way to explore this general phenomenon, rather than the manifestation of a tension that is unique to Austria, I would say.
I’m not sure it is a tension that can necessarily be resolved, so much as a tension that just defines the evolution of states. But I do think it is a tension that seems to be at the forefront of current political patterns in Europe, when we're seeing a major shift to the right and toward parties that resist efforts to adapt to a new global age. Or whose “adaptation” is to try to make Europe look more like how they imagined it did before globalization.
THE DIAL: In light of the rise in support for the FPÖ, how do you anticipate Austria’s political landscape evolving? What role might national traditions like Vienna’s ball season play in this political shift toward the right?
JJS: The hopeful version would be that the recent success of the right becomes motivation for left-wing and centrist parties to articulate arguments in favor of liberalism and open societies. If left-wing parties can use this as an opportunity to really articulate how important those traditions are, then I could imagine a reinvigorated left coming out of this past election cycle. But that is the hopeful version.
As for the balls, that tension you brought up — the tug-of-war between age-old traditions and the need to adapt — has always played out through culture. When the balls bring many different people together to let loose, and when they graft a rightful pride in Austria’s musical traditions to pluralism — that’s a good thing. When they’re co-opted to channel nostalgia or legitimize nativism, that gets more complicated.
✺ Read “Don’t Stop the Music” in “Issue 17: Land”
JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS is a novelist, journalist, and critic based in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the author of the novels The Exhibition of Persephone Q (a 2020 NYT Editors’ Choice) and The Visitors and a recipient of a fellowship from the German-American Fulbright Foundation. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Nation, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.
ONOFRIO DE MICHELLE is a writer and editor from Puglia, Italy. His work is featured in Interreligious Insight, Firebird and Scomodo. Now living in the US, he studies Anthropology at the University of Chicago.