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Rudi van Dantzig (1933-2012)
Rudi van Dantzig, one of the greatest personalities in world ballet, passed away on 19 January 2012. Without him, dance art would never be what it is today. He had an incredibly charismatic, inspiring personality, and also something we often find in short supply - respect for everyone he met. He was extremely tolerant and very socially aware.
For twenty years he was an excellent director of the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam. He brought the company up to world standards, creating his own original ballets, inviting other leading choreographers, and offering opportunities to young people - including myself. Dance art, talent, personality and diligence were all that counted. For the good of the company he often had to make tough decisions, and he told me once how much it cost him to do so. Years later I came to understand what huge satisfaction but also how great a burden was involved in running such a large ballet company for someone as sensitive as he was.
Professionally, for me Rudi was the most important person I ever met in my life. I trusted him very much, even when I had to bow my head in humility. To this day I feel extremely closely connected to him,
I consider him to have been my mentor and promoter. He always supported me in my choreographic undertakings.
It’s hard to believe that I will never be able to talk to him again, ask him for advice, that the man we loved so much is gone. We have been orphaned: the dancers he worked with, the choreographers who consider themselves his students, and the audiences who got the chance to experience his art.
Goodbye, Rudi. You will always remain a great man in my heart.
Krzysztof Pastor
The Dutch National Ballet says goodbye to Rudi van Dantzig
POLISH NATIONAL BALLET
PERFORMED IN SEVILLE
After giving a series of performances of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and taking part in a new production of Stanisław Moniuszko’s Halka, our ballet company went away to give guest performances in Seville. The organizer of this tour was the Spanish impresario Austin Rial Eshelman, who has decided to promote the Polish National Ballet in his country. Invited by Krzysztof Pastor to visit a year ago, after watching the company’s performances he invited our dancers to Seville to present Minkus’ La Bayadère in a production by Natalia Makarova. The performances, scheduled for 10-14 January 2012 at the Teatro de la Maestranza , were accompanied by the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla conducted by Tadeusz Wojciechowski. In the leading roles performed: Aleksandra Liashenko and Dagmara Dryl as Nikiya, Maksim Woitiul and Robert Gabdullin as Solor, Yuka Ebihara and Magdalena Ciechowicz (Gamzatti), Vladimir Yaroshenko and Maksim Woitiul (Golden Idol), and Sergey Basalaev (High Brahmin).
Talks are already under way regarding the Polish National Ballet’s future visits to Spain, including to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. This time the Spanish partners are interested in the ballet company’s contemporary repertoire.
Photo: Marek Górecki
ROBERT GABDULLIN APPOINTED FIRST SOLOIST OF THE PNB
He came here from Perm, where he was a principal dancer of the local ballet company. However, his career began when he was a teenager in Yekaterinburg. His first achievements were with the Nutcracker Ballet Theatre for children. Its director Mikhail Kogan remembers Robert for his “great humility”, his “exceptional capacity for work”, and his “innate love of dance”. Over the next six years, by then a professional ballet dancer, he rapidly developed a successful career at Yekaterinburg’s Opera and Ballet Theatre, ultimately becoming its first soloist.
For the next four years he was a principal dancer in Perm and danced the main roles in that ballet company’s entire repertoire. The famous choreographer Nikolai Boyartchikov , who staged Romeo and Juliet there, offered this enthusiastic opinion: “He is the best Romeo I’ve seen for years. He combines temperament, professionalism, physical fitness, and lyricism. Just as in opera there is always a problem with the tenor, in ballet it is the lyrical soloist. There have been few genuine lyrical dancers in my day, and Gabdullin is one of them”. He received many great reviews, and after his spectacular guest performance in the American show Kings of the Dance, the press in Perm hailed him as the “Prince of Dance”. He has won many awards (including the Triumph Prize in Moscow), performed in ballet galas, gone on foreign tours with different ballet companies, and had rave reviews.
In mid-2010 he decided to pursue his international career. From among the proposals that appear in the European trade press every year, the Polish National Ballet’s advertisement caught his attention. He came to Warsaw and accepted the position of soloist at our company. For the next year or so, he familiarized himself with the PNB’s repertoire, dancing parts in Cinderella, La Bayadère, and The Nutcracker. He was ultimately appointed first soloist of the Polish National Ballet, effective as of 1 January 2012. Hoping that Robert Gabdullin stays with us for a while, we would like to wish him many new achievements with Warsaw’s ballet company.
Photo: Archive
LUTOSŁAWSKI Choreographed by KRZYSZTOF PASTOR
New to the Dutch National Ballet’s Repertoire
Het Nationale Ballet is adding Krzysztof Pastor’s original new ballet, set to the music of Witold Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 4, to its repertoire. The Dutch National Ballet is celebrating its 50th jubilee with an exceptional artistic programme this season. Next to presentations of classics (Giselle, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King) and ballets by George Balanchine and William Forsythe, the Dutch National Ballet will stage new works by its three resident choreographers: Hans van Manen, Krzysztof Pastor and artistic director Ted Brandsen, as well as projects by Juanjo Argués, David Dawson, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, Alexei Ratmansky, Ton Simons, Christopher Wheeldon, and the ballet company’s young choreographers.
This is not the first time Pastor has worked with Lutosławski’s music. He incorporated the composer’s Dance Preludes, three of his Five Folk Melodies, and two movements from the Little Suite into the ballet Visions at Dusk created for Het Nationale Ballet (2007). Pastor’s new project will premiere at Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam on 15 February 2012 as part of an evening entitled Present/s - Festival New Works (1). The Holland Symfonia will be conducted by Matthew Rowe.
SERGEY POPOV WAS
PRINCE SIEGFRIED IN NORWAY
In his spare time, the Polish National Ballet’s first soloist Sergey Popov continues his earlier collaboration with St. Petersburg’s Russian Ballet Theatre as one of its first guest dancers. In the summer months, the ballet company presents ballet classics (Giselle, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker) on the historical stages of the Hermitage Theatre and the Court Theatre and at the auditorium of the Aurora Palace. Last summer Popov performed with the company in St. Petersburg.
On 10 December 2011 the artist lent support to the company with a guest appearance in the Russian Ballet’s performance of Swan Lake in Gjøvik, Norway. The town, picturesquely located on Lake Mjøsa, has a white swan in its coat-of-arms. That is why, on the 150th anniversary of the town receiving its charter, the local government invited the Russian ballet company to give a performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet in the choreographic version by Konstantin Sergeyev.
As Prince Siegfried, Popov was partner to Russian ballerina Natalia Potekhina as Odette/Odile. The reviewer from the Norwegian newspaper Oppland Arbeiderblad wrote appreciatively of the performance itself and the high artistic standard of the two main dancers, enthusing over Popov in the part of Siegfried.
Pictured: Sergey Popov as Prince Siegfried in a performance by the Russian Ballet Theatre.
Photo: Archive
TOER VAN SCHAYK and WAYNE EAGLING
Stage The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
with the Polish National Ballet
Toer van Schayk, the famous Dutch choreographer and stage designer, recipient of this year’s “ballet Oscar” - the Benois de la Danse prize - for lifetime achievement, is a guest of the Polish National Ballet. At the Teatr Wielki he is working on the new Warsaw production of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. This is a show he designed earlier with the Canadian choreographer Wayne Eagling at Het Nationale Ballet and repeated with the Finnish National Ballet in Helsinki. Both companies perform it to this day with great success. Soon it will also be part of the Polish National Ballet’s repertoire.
Toer van Schayk and Wayne Eagling’s production is called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and will contain some original elements in our version. The choreography stays the same, but this time the popular tale will be set in Warsaw in the early years of the 19th century, when the story’s writer E.T.A. Hoffmann worked here as a clerk and lived at the Tenement under Samson in Freta Street. Elements related to Warsaw will appear in the stage design which is also the work of Toer van Schayk.
Work on the choreography, involving leading soloists and the whole Polish National Ballet company as well as students from the Roman Turczynowicz Ballet School, began in mid-September. It is being supervised by Toer van Schayk in person, with support from his assistants. Rehearsals are overseen in turn by Caroline Iura, Natalia Hoffmann and Steven Etienne from Het Nationale Ballet, and Joseph Kerwin and Jarmo Rastas from the Finnish National Ballet. At the final stage of the work, the company will be joined by the show’s other choreographer Wayne Eagling, current director of the English National Ballet in London. The Warsaw premiere of the duo’s version of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is planned for 25 November, followed by performances on 26 & 27 November and 9, 10, 11, 18 & 28 December 2011; the show will return a year later, some time before Christmas 2012.
Photo by Ewa Krasucka
STÉPHANE DALLE
new ballet master of
the Polish National Ballet
On the 2nd November 2011, the Polish National Ballet was joined by a new ballet master Stéphane Dalle. He studied in Paris with Solange Golovine, Serge Golovine, Raymond Franchetti, Jaqueline Fynnaert and in New York with Stanley Williams, Andrei Kramarewsky, Gabriela Darwach, and William Griffith. In 1997 he was awarded the best partner prize from the Serge Lifar Competition held in Kiev, Ukraine. He received a diploma from the Varna Competition, Bulgaria, 1988. In 1984 he was the Johnson Foundation Prize winner with Lausanne Competition in Swizerland.
He has danced the classical and contemporary repertoire with: Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Bonner Oper, Opernhaus Zuerich, Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Ballet Frankfuert, English National Ballet (London), Ballet der Deutschen Oper am Rhein (Duesseldorf), Dutch National Ballet (Amsterdam), Ballet San José, Ballet British Columbia (Vancouver). Retired from dancing in 2006 he is now teaching Ballet Class and the Floor Barre (methode Boris Kniaseff) with Jurriens Foundation Center (Amsterdam), Dutch National Ballet (Amsterdam), Galili Dance (Goningen), Ballett Frankfurt, Ballett der Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Duesseldorf), Saarbrucken Ballet, Ballet San Jose, Stuttgarter Ballet, Conservatoire National 8em Paris, John Cranko Ballett Schule (Stuttgart), The Loft (Bruxelles) Architanz (Tokyo), Lines Dance Center (San Francisco), ABC Dance Center (Tokyo), National Ballet Spain (Madrid), Staatsballett Berlin and Scottish Ballet (Glasgow).
Photo: Ewa Krasucka
KRZYSZTOF PASTOR APPOINTED ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF BALLET AT THE
LITHUANIAN NATIONAL OPERA AND BALLET THEATRE
Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet and resident choreographer of the Dutch National Ballet, took on the additional duties of artistic director of ballet at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius as of 10 October 2011. Impressed by the achievements of the Polish National Ballet, the general director of our sister national theatre, Gintautas Kėvišas, asked the choreographer to breathe new artistic life into the Vilnius ballet company after the departure of Tatjana Sedunova, its artistic director for the past 19 years. Pastor will not be the first Polish artist among the directors of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre; he follows Jacek Kaspszyk, who was the theatre’s music director in 2006-2008, as well as Mariusz Treliński and Boris Kudlička who worked there briefly in 2008 staging Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.
Krzysztof Pastor has worked with the Lithuanian National Ballet before, producing Shchedrin’s Carmen (1997), A Midsummer Night’s Dream to music by Mendelssohn (1998), and the world premiere of Mindaugas Urbaitis’ new ballet Acid City (2002). Now he has agreed to support the Vilnius theatre with his concept for the ballet company’s continued development and his own productions. He also plans to develop the two companies’ collaboration through co-productions. The everyday work of the Lithuanian ballet will be overseen by director Rūta Railaitė, the Lithuanian artist who returned to her country after many years of teaching in Venezuela, and consulted with Pastor. We have to wait till the middle of next year for the first artistic effects of the new arrangement; in the current season the company will follow its earlier repertoire schedule.
100th Performance of Romeo and Juliet
and Gloria Artis Gold Medal
Marks 45th Anniversary of Emil Wesołowski’s Artistic Career
The Polish National Ballet’s resident choreographer celebrates 45 years of his artistic career this year. He debuted as a ballet dancer at the Poznań Opera in 1966, was one of the leading soloists of the Polish Dance Theatre under Conrad Drzewiecki’s management, and went on to run the ballet companies of the Wrocław Opera, the Teatr Wielki in Poznań, and the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera. He was also briefly the artistic director of Poznań’s Teatr Wielki. He teaches at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz State Theatre Academy and chairs the Authors of Choreographic Works Section of the ZAiKS Authors’ Association. Among many distinctions, he has received an Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, a Silver Cross of Merit, a Gloria Artis Silver Medal for Service to Culture, a Medal of the National Education Commission, and a ZAiKS Award for lifetime achievement. On 25 October 2011 Emil Wesołowski was also awarded a Gloria Artis Gold Medal for service to culture for his artistic achievements.
The main field of Emil Wesołowski’s activity is choreographic work for ballets and ballet schools, for opera, drama theatres, films, and television. He has designed many choreographies for the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera: Tritons, Games, The Legend of Joseph, Dies irae, The Rite of Spring, Romeo and Juliet, Harnasie, Returning Waves, Krzesany, The Miraculous Mandarin, Spartacus, and Kisses. He has staged ballets at the opera houses of Poznań, Wrocław, Łódź, Gdańsk, and Washington. As a choreographer, he has worked with many famous directors of operas and stage plays, both in Poland and abroad, his most frequent and most creative collaborations being with Mariusz Treliński (Madame Butterfly, King Roger, Othello, Onegin, Don Giovanni, The Queen of Spades, Andrea Chénier, La Bohème) and Janusz Wiśniewski (Panopticum à la Madame Tussaud, The End of Europe, Prayer of a Sick Man Before Night, The Tempest, Noah’s Ark, Lobotomobil). He has directed shows himself: Rossini’s Semiramide at the Polish National Opera, Moniuszko’s The Haunted Manor and the musical Fiddler on the Roof at Poznań’s Teatr Wielki, and Johann Strauss’s The Gypsy Baron at the Baltic Opera.
To celebrate the artist’s jubilee, on 28 October 2011 the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera will present the 100th performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in Emil Wesołowski’s version. His new choreography for this season will be Cain and Abel to music by Andrzej Panufnik, commissioned by the Polish National Ballet as part of an evening called The Biblical Parables (premiere: 14 April 2012).
Photo: Paweł Rosłon
KRZYSZTOF PASTOR AND THE PNB’S THE RITE OF SPRING
NOMINATED FOR THE CORYPHAEUS OF POLISH MUSIC AWARD
The Coryphaeus of Polish Music is a new award initiated by the music community and granted by that community to its most outstanding representatives. The award will go to individuals, groups of artists, and institutions whose work is linked to Polish music. It will be granted in three categories: Personality of the Year, Event of the Year, and Honorary Award. The nominees for the new award’s first edition were chosen on 16 September 2011. Out of a total of 139 proposals, the Programming Board for Music of the
Institute of Music and Dance selected 5 nominees in each category. The award-winners will be chosen by a Board of Electors.
We are happy to inform you that the nominees for the Coryphaeus of Polish Music 2011 award in the Personality of the Year category include the director of the Polish National Ballet, Krzysztof Pastor, and in the Event of the Year category - The Rite of Spring staged by the Polish National Ballet at the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera. The winners will be announced on 1 October 2011 at a special award gala. KRZYSZTOF PASTOR AND THE PNB’S THE RITE OF SPRING
NOMINATED FOR THE CORYPHAEUS OF POLISH MUSIC AWARD
The Coryphaeus of Polish Music is a new award initiated by the music community and
granted by that community to its most outstanding representatives. The award will go to
individuals, groups of artists, and institutions whose work is linked to Polish music. It
will be granted in three categories: Personality of the Year, Event of the Year, and
Honorary Award. The nominees for the new award’s first edition were chosen on 16
September 2011. Out of a total of 139 proposals, the Programming Board for Music of the
Institute of Music and Dance selected 5 nominees in each category. The award-winners will
be chosen by a Board of Electors.
We are happy to inform you that the nominees for the Coryphaeus of Polish Music 2011
award in the Personality of the Year category include the director of the Polish National
Ballet, Krzysztof Pastor, and in the Event of the Year category - The Rite of Spring
staged by the Polish National Ballet at the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera. The
winners will be announced on 1 October 2011 at a special award gala.
Soloist
SVETLANA SIPLATOVA (from the Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg)
Corps de Ballet
ANNA CZESZEJKO (from the State Ballet School, Gdańsk)
YUKA EBIHARA (from the Ballet of the Croatian National Theatre, Zagreb)
TOMASZ FABIAŃSKI (from the State Ballet School, Warsaw)
IZABELA GRZESZCZAK (from the State Ballet School, Warsaw)
VADZIM KEZIK (from the Ballet of the Castle Opera, Szczecin)
YURIKA KITANO (from the Finnish National Ballet, Helsinki)
AGATA KUCZYŃSKA (from the State Ballet School, Gdańsk)
ROSEANNA LENEY (from the Royal Ballet School, London)
ADAM MYŚLIŃSKI (from the State Ballet School, Bytom)
LACHLAN PHILLIPS (from the Thuringian Ballet, Altenburg-Gera)
ALEXANDRA VADON (from the Ballet Academy, Munich)
ELIZA WALASZCZYK (from the State Ballet School, Warsaw)
 3rd Days of Dance at the Teatr Wielki
12-28 September 2011
The upcoming ballet festival at the Teatr Wielki, held every autumn, promises to be very attractive in its third year. It will involve six companies from France, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Japan presenting a very diverse repertoire. However, the programme of the 3rd Days of Dance features mainly contemporary choreographic works by famous artists, such as Pina Bausch, Jiří Kylián, and Krzysztof Pastor. We will meet the French choreographer Kader Attou and his company, and see a new work by Robert Bondara, a young choreographer from the Polish National Ballet. We will also pay tribute to the Polish and Japanese dance traditions in performances by the Mazowsze and Reika ensembles.
Of course the festival’s highlight will be the visit of the Wuppertal Tanztheater; they will present works by Pina Bausch, the creator of dance theatre who recently passed away. We will see two different performances by the famous German choreographer: a two-part evening with Café Müller and Das Frühlingsopfer, and one of her last works, Vollmond. Next, there will be Jiří Kylián’s very original production Last Touch First endorsed by the Holland Dance Festival in The Hague and prepared together with Michael Schumacher and Sabine Kupferberg. It requires a very special setting, so it will be shown on the Chamber Stage to a limited audience. La Compagnie Accrorap from France with Kader Attou will bring its dance interpretation of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs to Warsaw.
As always, the initiator and host of the festival is the Polish National Ballet; the company will perform Krzysztof Pastor’s latest work, the poetic ballet And the Rain Will Pass… inspired by the music of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki and the poetry of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. Our company will also present the premiere of Persona, Robert Bondara’s original piece to music by Arvo Pärt, Paweł Szymański, and Aldona Nawrocka.
Festival Programme:
12 September 2011, 7 p.m.
MAZOWSZE
State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble
Programme of Polish dances and songs
13 September 2011, 7 p.m. (Chamber Stage)
Holland Dance in association with the Nederlands Dans Theater (The Hague, The Netherlands)
LAST TOUCH FIRST
Choreography JIŘÍ KYLIÁN, MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, SABINE KUPFERBERG
Music DIRK HAUBRICH
16 & 17 September 2011, 7 p.m.
Tanztheater Wuppertal (Wuppertal, Germany)
CAFÉ MÜLLER and DAS FRÜHLINGSOPFER
Director and choreographer PINA BAUSCH
Music HENRY PURCELL and IGOR STRAVINSKY
(In association with the Goethe-Institut in Warsaw, main partner of the North Rhine-Westphalia Cultural Season in Poland)
18 & 20 September 2011, 7:30 p.m. (Chamber Stage)
Polish National Ballet (Warsaw, Poland)
PERSONA
Choreography ROBERT BONDARA
Music ARVO PÄRT, PAWEŁ SZYMAŃSKI, ALDONA NAWROCKA
21 & 22 September 2011, 7 p.m.
Tanztheater Wuppertal (Wuppertal, Germany)
VOLLMOND
Director and choreographer PINA BAUSCH
Music AMON TOBIN, BALANESCU-QUARTETT, CAT POWER, CARL CRAIG, JUN MIYAKE, LEFTFIELD, MAGYAR POSSE, NENAD JELIC, RENE AUBRY, TOM WAITS, and others
(In association with the Goethe-Institut in Warsaw, main partner of the North Rhine-Westphalia Cultural Season in Poland)
24 & 28 September 2011, 7 p.m., and 25 September 2011, 6 p.m.
Polish National Ballet (Warsaw, Poland)
AND THE RAIN WILL PASS...
Choreography KRZYSZTOF PASTOR
Music HENRYK MIKOŁAJ GÓRECKI
Conductor WOJCIECH MICHNIEWSKI
25 September 2011, 7:30 p.m. (Chamber Stage)
Reika Modern Dance Body Expression (Tokyo, Japan)
MANGEKYO
Choreography REIKA
Music COLLAGE
(In association with the Japan East Europe Artists Exchange Association in Tokyo)
27 September 2011, 7 p.m.
La Compagnie Accrorap (La Rochelle, France)
SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS
Choreography KADER ATTOU
Music HENRYK MIKOŁAJ GÓRECKI
(In association with the French Institute in Warsaw)
Photo: Ewa Krasucka/design: Katarzyna Ogrodnik
GLORIA ARTIS GOLD MEDAL FOR KRZYSZTOF PASTOR
The director of the Polish National Ballet, Krzysztof Pastor has been awarded a Gloria Artis Gold Medal for service to culture for his choreographic achievements around the world and for his artistic and organizational effort to raise the prestige of ballet art in Poland. He received the medal from Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski on 22 June 2011.
The Gloria Artis medals for service to culture are granted to individuals who have contributed in a special way to the arts, cultural activity or to protecting national culture and heritage. Apart from Krzysztof Pastor, gold medals were also presented to the writer Olgierd Budrewicz, the theatre studies scholar Janusz Degler, and the conductor Henryk Wojnarowski.
Photo: Ewa Krasucka
SCULPTURE OF VASLAV AND BRONISLAVA NIJINSKY GRACES THE TEATR WIELKI’S FOYER
On 11 June 2011, during the intermission of the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps, Poland’s first sculpture of the legendary Polish dancers / choreographers, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska was unveiled in the Teatr Wielki’s foyer, in their famous roles of the Faun and the Nymph from the ballet L’après-midi d’un faune. Commissioned by the Polish National Ballet, it was made in bronze by the well-known Ukrainian sculptor Gennadij Jerszow - the same sculptor whose statuettes of the dancing Wojciech Wiesiołłowski are presented to the main prize winners of the Polish National Dance Competition in Gdańsk. The sculpture for the Teatr Wielki was financed by GDF SUEZ Energia Polska.
The official unveiling was performed by Waldemar Dąbrowski, general director of the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera, accompanied by Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet, and Grzegorz Górski, president of GDF SUEZ Energia Polska SA. To mark the occasion, the Theatre Museum prepared a small exhibition of archival materials entitled Poles in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, as a reminder that a few dozen Polish dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava being the most prominent among them, performed in Diaghilev’s ballet company in 1909-1929.
The sculpture of the Nijinskys will stay as a permanent element of the Teatr Wielki’s reception rooms, in remembrance of the two greatest Polish ballet personalities whose talent flourished and brought them fame as dancers and choreographers of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
Photo by Tomasz Ośka
VASLAV NIJINSKY – EMANUEL GAT – MAURICE BÉJART
The Polish National Ballet offers a triple serving of The Rite of Spring
at the Teatr Wielki on the 100th anniversary of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
This will be an unprecedented premiere. No ballet company in the world so far has decided to offer its audiences a single ballet evening with three different choreographies of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The very first time this happens will be at the Teatr Wielki, and it promises to be sensational. From among more than 200 different choreographies designed for different productions around the world, for our show we have chosen the two most famous ones that today are part of the repertoire canon of contemporary ballet. We will present Vaslav Nijinsky’s revolutionary world-premiere version of “scenes from pagan Russia” (1913) as reconstructed by Millicent Hodson. You will also see the legendary choreographic interpretation, half a century younger, of Maurice Béjart (1959), who called it a universal “hymn to the uniting of man and woman, the connection of heaven and earth, the dance of life and death”. Between them we will show you one of the latest versions, the original choreography by Emanuel Gat (2004) in which extra fire is provided by the Latin American salsa.
Our company’s best dancers are involved in the Polish National Ballet’s project. The Polish National Opera Orchestra will be trained and conducted by Łukasz Borowicz. The production is being prepared by a whole team of foreign ballet masters: Millicent Hodson herself, who is personally staging her reconstruction of Nijinsky’s choreography, Emanuel Gat’s assistants: Mia Alon, Roy Assaf and Michael Löhr, and experts on Béjart’s choreography: Tony Fabre, Kyra Kharkevitch and Domenico Levré. The premiere will take place at the Teatr Wielki on 11 June 2011, followed by performances on 12, 19, 21 June and, after a break, in February and March 2012.
With its triple production of The Rite of Spring, the Polish National Ballet is joining the international celebration of the 100th anniversary of Sergei Diaghilev’s famous company, Les Ballets Russes. Around the world, different projects are linked to different events from a hundred years ago, such as the first Russian Seasons in Paris that Diaghilev organized in 1909 and 1910, the formation of the regular company Les Ballets Russes de Diaghilev in Monte Carlo (1911), or the subsequent premieres of L’après-midi d’un faune (1912), The Rite of Spring (1913), etc. We are drawing on Diaghilev’s founding of Les Ballets Russes because half of the company members - as few people remember today - were Polish dancers, graduates of the then ballet school of the Teatr Wielki. And, we are staging The Rite of Spring as the greatest choreographic work by Vaslav Nijinsky.
As an added attraction, during these performances members of the audience will be able to buy the new edition of Vaslav Nijinsky’s famous Diary in a Polish translation by Grzegorz Wiśniewski, a publication that has long been out of print. It is being released in a new series published by the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera Library in association with Axis Mundi publishing house.
Pictured: Vaslav Nijinsky, Emanuel Gat, and Maurice Béjart
Photo: Archive
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