BALLET EVENING (In two parts)

2022 / 2023                Main Hall                  the 10th Season

20 June * Tuesday * 7.00 pm

 

AS PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL OPERA AND BALLET FESTIVAL “OPERALIA”

 

BALLET EVENING

In two parts

 

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes (with one interval)

Please note that the age limit is 10+.

Management reserves the right to substitute performers and works performed

 

Gala Ballet

__________________

One-act ballets choreographed by Jiří Kylián: Falling Angels staged by the “Astana Ballet” Theatre; Petite Mort and Sechs Tänze staged by the Astana Opera House

 

__________________

 

One-act ballets choreographed by Jiří Kylián

 

 

FALLING ANGELS

ASTANA BALLET PRODUCTION

 

Music: Steve Reich (USA)

Choreographer: Jiří Kylián

Assistant to the Choreographer: Stefan Zeromski

 

Costume Designer: Joke Visser

Light Design: Jiří Kylián (concept)

Light Design Realization: Joop Caboort

Production Director: Joost Biegelaar

 

 

Falling Angels, one of the most unusual opuses in Jiří Kylián’s cycle of black and white ballets, was staged in 1989 and since then has been an undoubted bestseller in the dance world.

This short ballet, which lasts only 15 minutes, makes a stunning impression. Clear, picking up the rhythm of the drums; graphic figures of dancers divided into even light squares of the tablet scene; a bizarre combination of light and movement – all this holds and does not let go for a moment of attention.

The title represents a process, a fall, a levitation. Soaring in the free flight of creativity, even though sometimes life makes us fall from heaven and hit very hard – that’s the point of the production.

“Falling Angels, set to Steve Reich’s Drumming, is a ballet about our profession,” says Jiří Kylián. “It’s about a dance that will live on even if we are all gone. And Falling Angels is also a ballet about a woman: her fears and striving for perfection, the struggle for a place in the sun and the desire to overcome adversity. It has been said that dance is always love. Falling Angels is a declaration of love for ballet, for women; for the things that fill life: ups and downs, successes and failures, pain and joy.”

 “Dance is like love” is one of Jiří Kylián’s artistic credos. He gives his dancers the opportunity to give themselves unconditionally and selflessly to dance and to feel what they are feeling, while at the same time demanding uncompromising musicality and technical precision.

 

* * * * *

 

ASTANA OPERA PRODUCTIONS

 

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”.

 

* * *

 

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

BALLET DANCERS OF THE "ASTANA BALLET" THEATRE

 

Artistic Director of the Astana Opera Ballet Company:

Altynai ASYLMURATOVA, People’s Artist of Russia

 

Stage Manager: Elmira SULTANGAZINA

 

Tickets purchased at the Astana Opera are exchangeable and refundable only in cases of cancelled or postponed performances. In all other cases, no refunds and exchanges are possible.