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A movable feast

The National Theater offers a smorgasbord of ballet
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
November 28th, 2007 issue

Photo by PAVEL HEJNY
Forms and variations. Rather than a heavy main course, four appetizers are offered.
Czech Ballet Symphony

When: Saturday, Dec. 1, at 2 and 7
Where: National Theater
Tickets: 30–550 Kč, available at the venue

Last season, the National Theater Ballet premiered two full-length works that were essentially the equivalent of five-course meals — long, heavy and with some ingredients more appealing than others. This season the focus has shifted toward tea time, with two of the three premieres made up of smaller, bite-size portions.  
The first premiere of the season, Czech Ballet Symphony, debuted in September, and is just as lovely and light as the title implies. The assemblage of four brief ballets is no trifle, but the night certainly sits easier than the ponderous evenings of the past.
The concept is a two-hour homage to Czech dance and music, with all four featured ballets choreographed by Czech dancers to works by Czech composers. If the theme rings familiar, it was also the focus of last season’s Miniatures, the presentation of works by young company members. Czech Ballet Symphony could be considered the higher-quality, grownup version of last year’s experiment.
For the uninitiated, Czech Ballet Symphony also serves as a nice, easy introduction to Czech dance and music, offering a primer on the big names in the country’s classical music legacy (Bohuslav Martinů, Bedřich Smetana, Leoš Janáček and Antonín Dvořák) and a range of choreographic personalities, from the world-renowned Jiří Kylián to two of the National Theater’s newcomers.
A work by Petr Zuska, current artistic director of the National Theater Ballet, begins the evening with a definitive demonstration of talent. The ballet, D.M.J. 1953–1977, was created in 2004 for the National Theater Ballet of Brno. Six couples dance around and on top of large boxes that continue to change in interpretation throughout the performance, morphing from benches to gravestones to balconies. These seemingly simple set pieces provide an element of uncertainty to the work, keeping the audience wondering what’s coming next and giving the dancers a remarkably malleable prop.
An additional couple performs the lead pas de deux, a beautifully created and executed work of indeterminate, blank pain. The choreography and music build to become more violent and more passionate as the couples dance more among each other than with each other, searching for something but seeing nothing. This piece is a quietly stunning example of Zuska at his best.
The two following pieces offer work by new choreographers on the Czech scene, Tomáš Rychetský and Zuzana Šimáková. Rychetský’s The Unspoken Silence comes first. Its jarring, dissonant beginning is disquieting both visually and aurally, as a man slowly walks up stairs toward a light, accompanied by mechanical sounds. When he gets to the top of the stairs he drops out of sight, replaced by women dancing within two “rooms” of light at opposite ends of the stage. Trying to watch what seem to be two separate pieces performed at the same time can be disconcerting.
Silence is less fluid and romantic than other Rychetský works, notably the primally beautiful Zlomené sny from Miniatures, his prior work set to Czech music. But the piece is captivating in its use of stringent boundaries, both in the limits put on the dancers’ room to move and the physical movements themselves.
Šimáková’s 6 Halves of a Human restricts itself to no boundaries, which is evident early on when its six male dancers perform on miniature trampolines. The ballet seems at times like a play, with the men posturing as they each embody different male stereotypes. There’s the narcissus, the bully, the clown, the nerd, the pretty boy and the “normal” one. The fun is in watching these archetypes interact, each continually trying to assert dominance as the alpha half-male. This lampoon of the different elements and masks of men may be silly (most ballets don’t periodically channel Saturday Night Fever), but it provides a nicely divergent addition to the evening.
Fittingly, Czech Ballet Symphony ends with the ballet that established Jiří Kylián as an international star, his 1978 Sinfonietta. The work’s ethereal loveliness holds up over time as it celebrates the inspiration found in beautiful music.
Unfortunately, Kylián’s intentions were marred at the premiere performance by shoddy work on the part of the National Theater’s ballet corps. Notably, the men who appeared when the curtain rose were not in sync, starting the piece out on a bad (forgive the pun) foot. The ballet improved as the corps disbanded and the piece’s signature element of variegated pas de deux began.
Sinfionetta is, in a word, pretty. Its white and pastel costumes flowing around lithe bodies resemble a watercolor painting brought to life. The choreography goes beyond a charming surface, though, to demonstrate Kylián’s skill at using great classical music to create a great ballet. The piece culminates in a burst of leaping, sending audience members out on a literal high note.
From Šimáková’s take on Czech humor to Kylián’s illustrated love of Czech music, the National Theater Ballet’s celebration of the country’s cultural heritage is a success, and a welcome addition to the company’s repertoire.

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (28/11/2007):

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