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Honoring a native son

The National Theater pays tribute to dance legend Jiří Kylián
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
September 26th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The tribute features the youngest of Kylián's Netherlands dance troupes performing a trio of his recent works.
COURTESY PHOTO
Netherlands

When: Sept. 29 and 30 at 7
Where: National Theater
Tickets: 30–900 Kč, available at National Theater box offices

Czech dancer and choreographer Jiří Kylián was recognized for his talent in England in the 1960s, when the Royal Ballet School invited him to hone his skills in London. In 1968, Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet courted him to join its ranks. And for nearly 35 years Kylián has been revered on the Dutch dance scene as choreographer and artistic director of the Netherlands Dans Theater.
It took much longer, though, for Kylián to be duly admired in his home country.
To celebrate Kylián’s contributions to choreography — and his 60th birthday — the National Theater is hosting a tribute to him this weekend. The two-night event will feature three of Kylián’s short ballets performed by Netherlands Dans Theater II.
Kylián was born in Prague in 1947, and trained in classical ballet. In a 1995 interview, the press-shy Kylián recalled his formative years in Prague this way: “The only colors I remember from my youth are gray, brown and black. And I don’t just mean visual colors; they were also the colors of my feelings. The bleak uniformity imposed upon us was devastating.”
Nonetheless, Kylián’s talent blossomed early. “Even during his studies at the Dance Conservatory of Prague, he would create choreography for his schoolmates,” recalls Jiří Opěla, a local ballet promoter with REAL – International Arts Services and a longtime supporter of Kylián’s work.
His talent quickly took him abroad, first with a one-year scholarship to study at the Royal Ballet School in London. In 1968, an offer to join the Stuttgart Ballet enabled him to emigrate from Czechoslovakia. At the German dance company he worked with South African choreographer John Cranko and continued developing his own skills, creating original dance works.
In 1973, the Netherlands Dans Theater commissioned a work from Kylián. Two years later the company appointed him artistic director, a position he held through 1999. Currently, he is one of the group’s two resident choreographers.
Netherlands Dans Theater is renowned worldwide for its contemporary works. The company was established in 1959 after breaking away from the more traditional Dutch National Ballet, and performs modern dance pieces based on the classical training of its dancers and choreographers. Kylián’s quarter-century of leadership was instrumental in the company attaining and maintaining a place of importance on the international stage.
Kylián’s choreography, often hailed for its dynamic energy and use of shape, speed and humor, was an ideal fit for the Netherlands Dans Theater and the general proclivity of the ballet world toward more contemporary experimentation in the 1970s and ’80s. His international break came with the ballet Sinfionetta in 1978, performed that year at the annual Spoleto Festival in the U.S. state of Charleston, South Carolina.
Opěla says the acclaim was inevitable. “[Kylián’s] worldwide success had to arrive at some point, thanks to his talent and artistic quality,” he says.
From the second half of the 1980s through the early 2000s, Kylián continued to transform his classical training into more abstract, surreal choreography at Netherlands Dans Theater, creating some of his and the company’s most well-known works. In 1995 he received one of the Netherlands’ highest honors, becoming an Officier in de Orde van Oranje Nassau.
During his tenure as artistic director, Kylián re-shaped the company into three separate components, adding Netherlands Dans Theater II — a “young and dynamic” group of 17- to 22-year-old dancers — and on the other end of the spectrum, Netherlands Dans Theater III, a troupe of dancers over 40. All three companies perform distinct, individual repertoires.
While Kylián was becoming an international star, his works were anathema to the Czech dance establishment.
“At a time when Czech theaters employed mainly classical techniques focusing on the Russian classical ballet school, Kylián was not, and should not have been, known,” Opěla says. The turning point came when Kylián was invited to perform in the 1982 Prague Spring festival.
“He and NDT were received with great enthusiasm and with undying applause — even hard-core supporters of classical ballet saw that there were other ways of artistic expression,” Opěla recalls. “After some time, a few of his choreographic works were staged, first in the Prague Chamber Ballet. And now the majority of his works can be seen on the National Theater stage.”
Indeed, Prague has embraced its native choreographer in recent years as more of his works are performed locally. The Netherlands Dans Theater’s most recent appearance here was in 2002, as part of the NATO summit events at Prague Castle.
Kylián will be returning with the troupe for this celebration of his career and birthday. His youngest dancers will perform three of his works from recent years: 27’52”, named for the work’s precise length of time, is a dance exploration of shifting shapes; Chapeau, set to various Prince songs, is a crowd-pleasing confection choreographed for the 25th jubilee of the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix, and an homage to her love of hats; and Sleepless is a piece for six dancers based on Kylián’s ideas of continual motion.
“[The tribute to Kylián] is important for the National Theater,” Opěla says. “But even more important is that the Czech public can see his works.” Kylián, Opěla adds, is “one of the greatest living Czech artists. We don’t have so many of those.”

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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