BALLET EVENING

BALLET EVENING

In two parts

Chopiniana to music by F. Chopin, choreography by M. Fokine

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One-act ballets Sechs Tänze and Petite Mort to music by W.A.Mozart choreography by Jiří Kylián

Performed by the Astana Opera ballet dancers, accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the theatre.

Conductor: Elmar BURIBAYEV

Artistic Director of the Astana Opera Ballet Company:

Altynai ASYLMURATOVA, People’s Artist of Russia

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CHOPINIANA

(one-act ballet to music by Frédéric Chopin)

Choreography by Mikhail Fokine

Revised version by Agrippina Vaganova (1931)

Set and costume design based on original sketches by Alexandre Benois and Orest Allegri

Ballet Master Producer: Altynai Asylmuratova, People’s Artist of Russia

Assistant Ballet Masters Producers: Konstantin Zaklinsky, Honoured Artist of Russia / Elena Sherstneva

Set Design: Victor Carare

Costume Designer: Arassel Dosmuratova

Lighting Designer: Vincenzo Raponi

In 1908, Mikhail Fokine composed a non-narrative ballet sketch. As the choreographer wrote, it was “in the style of that long-forgotten time, when ballet was governed by poetry, when a dancer rose en pointe not to demonstrate the steel-like arch of her foot, but in order to create the impression of lightness, barely touching the ground, something ethereal and fantastical… I have tried not to surprise

people with the novelty, but rather to restore the conventional ballet dancing to the point of its greatest advances. I don’t know how our ballet predecessors danced. And no one else knows that. But in my dreams this is precisely how they did dance.”

The entire suite, woven by the choreographer of fleeting visions consonant with Chopin’s music, captivate the audience by its pensive beauty.

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One-act ballets to music by W. A. Mozart

choreography by Jiří Kylián

PETITE MORT

Production Concept / Set Design / Choreography: Jiří Kylián

Assistant to the Choreographer: Stefan Zeromski

Costume Design: Joke Visser

Light Design: Jiří Kylián

Light Design Realization: Joop Caboort

Technical Supervisor Light/Set: Joost Biegelaar

Piano: Dolores Umbetaliyeva, Honoured Worker of Kazakhstan

The ballet Petite Mort was created to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (the slow movements of two piano concertos) for the Salzburg Festival on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1991.

The title Petite Mort is profound and metaphorical. “La petite mort” (“the little death”) is what the French call the culmination of carnal pleasures, but Kylián is fascinated by the diversity of lovemaking, from innocent touches to passionate entanglements of bodies.

The six adagios arising from the meditative mass compositions are a masterpiece of amazing interpenetration of a magnificent musical basis and filigree movements. The bodies are obedient to the touch of the partners and the breath of the music, the love duels are drawn by an intricate graphic of lines.

Here love and death go hand in hand. The ballet is performed by six men and six women. In the hands of the male dancers there are either sharp rapiers or naked female bodies. The duets in Petite Mort are filled with sensuality, but Jiří Kylián does not at all emphasise the theme of carnal love; on the contrary, the divine harmony of his choreography leads to the fact that the duets suddenly lose all corporal sexuality and the eroticism loses its unambiguousness. It is not by chance that Kylián’s ballet has been called “a love lyric of the highest standard”.

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SECHS TÄNZE

Choreographer: Jiří Kylián

Assistant to the Choreographer: Shirley Esseboom

Set and Costume Designs: Jiří Kylián

Light Design: Jiří Kylián (concept)

Light Design Realization: Joop Caboort

Technical Supervisor Light/Set: Joost Biegelaar

The ballet Sechs Tänze was created by Jiří Kylián in 1986, marking the 230th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And it is probably one of the most famous comic ballets, part of the so-called “Black & White Ballets” series. It has since been one of the most acclaimed productions. Jiří Kylián has a special signature style, which has far exceeded the bounds of the classical “canon”. He has been firmly established as a philosophical choreographer, exploring more the depths of human nature than the physical capacities of the body, and is renowned for his phenomenal musicality. Today, many theatres around the world are fighting for the right to stage dance compositions by Jiří Kylián, the Czech genius of contemporary ballet, the Picasso of dance.

Two centuries separate us from the time Mozart wrote his German Dances. A historical period shaped considerably by wars, revolutions, and all sorts of social upheavals. With this in mind, I found it impossible to simply create different dance numbers reflecting merely the humour and musical brilliance of the composer. Instead, I have set six seemingly non-sensical acts, which obviously ignore their surroundings. They are dwarfed in face of the ever-present troubled world, which most of us for some unspecified reason carry in our souls. Although the entertaining quality of Mozart’s Sechs Tänze enjoys great general popularity, it shouldn’t only be regarded as a burlesqué. Its humour ought to serve as a vehicle to point towards our relative values.

Jiří Kylián

BALLET DANCERS AND THE ASTANA OPERA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA