Astana Opera started work with one of the most sought-after choreographers of European contemporary dance of the end of the 20th century – a genius Jiří Kylián. The first ballet of his to be staged in the capital will be Sechs Tänze to the music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It will be released on March 25 and 26, Delovoy Kazakhstan reports.
To persuade Jiří Kylián to stage a ballet much further than windy Netherlands is always a great success. The artistic director of the Astana Opera Ballet Company, People’s Artist of Russia Altynai Asylmuratova succeeded. The world ballet star performed numerous ballets in Western Europe and, like no one else, knows the value of working with such professionals as Jiří Kylián.
“I wanted to introduce the choreography of this unique ballet master to the Kazakhstani audience for a long time now. His ballets are created with his supreme musicality, exquisite taste, sense of harmony, that is, he creates truly high art. He possesses a rare quality that not all choreographers have: he knows how to stage ballets with a sense of humour. Oddly enough, this can be difficult to do, because it either turns out not funny, or foolish or even rude. Jiří Kylián has many productions that I would like to see running on our stage, but it was decided to start with Sechs Tänze. It is a rather small work that has no cabrioles or fouettés, but it is one more masterpiece that is easy to comprehend, with subtle humour and ingenuity. Hopefully, we will have an opportunity to stage his large-scale works. My dream is for his ballet La Petite Mort to be performed here. It is an absolute masterpiece,” Altynai Asylmuratova said.
The ballet company’s artistic director also noted that Sechs Tänze has very complex plastique. However, there is no doubt that everything will work out. Perhaps, because the company already has experience in neoclassical performances, as the dancers have worked with many choreographers, including Raimondo Rebeck, Patrick de Bana, Tibor Koczák, Luigi Bonino and many others. “I will not say that it will become easier for them, but that it will definitely be clearer. They will quickly understand what is required of them,” Altynai Asylmuratova explained.
The preparation process began with the casting. Incidentally, all the parts here are leading parts. The viewers will see eight pairs of dancers onstage. They will have to convey to the audience a comedic story, which does not have a specific plot, but that is precisely the reason why it is so captivating, as everyone will discover the meaning of the ballet for themselves.
The New Style of Ballet Aesthetics
To grasp the importance of the upcoming event, it is enough to take a look at the biography of the world dance icon – Jiří Kylián. His career became successful dizzyingly fast: he started working with Stuttgart Ballet and soon became its soloist. In 1975 he was already invited to become an artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater, where he created the company’s rich repertoire. The ballet master achieved international acclaim after his ballet Sinfonietta to Leoš Janáček’s music at the International Dance Competition “Città di Spoleto”. Among his works of that time are Psalmensymfonie and Svadebka to Stravinsky’s music, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges to Ravel’s music.
Many dreamed of collaborating with him, but not everyone can master the new style of ballet aesthetics and pass it on to the next generations. One of his permanent assistants is Shirley Esseboom, who has worked for a long time at the Nederlands Dans Theater. She is a winner of prestigious dance awards, and is also a freelance choreographer for Kylián Productions. She trains dancers and stages Kylián’s works around the world, including Astana Opera.
It stands to reason that it is not easy for dancers to immediately orient themselves in the new choreography. Here you need to dance like breathing, so that the efforts are invisible. The Honoured Worker of Kazakhstan principal dancer Gaukhar Ussina said that she was impressed with Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, when she saw it for the time in Minsk, in the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus.
“I liked the easy to perceive, spectacular and exquisite choreography of this ballet. It harmoniously combines contemporary dance and classical music. Its entire meaning is perceived by the audience within the context of humour. Jiří Kylián is a choreographer whose works almost all dancers wish to perform. His ballets are featured in the repertoires of all leading international companies and it is certainly a great honour for Astana Opera to work with his production,” the ballerina noted.
Her stage partner, principal dancer Olzhas Tarlanov, shares this opinion.
“Thanks to the fact that I worked for 7 years in Munich, I was lucky to perform Jiří Kylián’s ballets, including Zugvögel, which only Munich’s Bayerisches Staatsballett performs. I also performed the Nuages pas de deux created by this wonderful choreographer. Its style is quite similar to Sechs Tänze. In ballet, there is such a thing as ‘muscle memory’, and when I started rehearsals, I immediately remembered Kylián’s style. The choreography of our ballet is lively and, most importantly, the work is incredibly musical. There are very dynamic duets here, and each gesture has its own note, which you need to hit, as well as make many other movements at the same time. To perform this ballet well, you need to perfectly know the rich choreography, and not think about it onstage, but surrender to emotions, acting skills, gestures. In addition, Sechs Tänze is full of complex facial expressions, which may seem like ‘affectations’. The company is given the task not to emulate what was before us, it is necessary to feel the dance in our own way, to give a personal interpretation. In general, for the performers, this is a very good material to open up and overcome the barrier of ‘affectations’. We are accustomed to classical ballet eye appeal, but in Sechs Tänze it will be completely different,” Olzhas Tarlanov shared.
Black and White Ballet
Sechs Tänze belongs to a series of Czech ballet master’s black and white ballets. Thus, the production uses black backdrops and mobile pannier dresses on rollers (which are also used as scenery). However, overall, the production is designed in a minimalist style. The play of light and shadow has a particularly important role in this production.
Under the careful guidance of the deputy director for design and production, Victor Carare, work is in full swing in the restoration and handicraft shop, prop shop and costume shop. Now, combat rapiers, green apples, symbolizing temptation ever since biblical times, powdered wigs and much more have already been handed over to the rehearsal studios.
Arriving at the costume shop, you unwittingly get amazed over the almost invisible costumes on the dancers.
“The costumes in the brilliant Jiří Kylián’s abstract opus transport us to the era of the Age of Enlightenment, where men appear in drawers and powdered wigs, and women in petticoats with corsets and disheveled hair. Their outfits in shades of cream and powder blend into the skin tone. Only on the faces there is whitened makeup with rouged cheeks and painted lips of cinnabar colour,” Dariga Taishikova, who works in costume design for Astana Opera, explained.
“The style of the costumes is concise and simple. Therefore, it requires even more attention to detail, following the features of the patterns and the accuracy of the 18th century designs. For the first time in our opera house, we see fanciful black pannier dresses that move around the stage ‘with’ and ‘without’ their owners. To implement the author’s unique idea, our craftsmen used mixed techniques, the best materials and technologies. Any moving frame, like this one, is similar to a machine, where every screw must be in its place,” Dariga Taishykova concluded.
The lighting is equally important in this ballet. Jiří Kylián himself created the concept of artistic lighting, and at Astana Opera it will be brought to life by Joost Biegelaar. The lighting designer joined the Nederlands Dans Theater I in 1992, where, under the direction of Jiří Kylián, he worked, produced and toured with the company’s production and technical team around the world.
Echo of Times
The unique ballet, created in the 20th century, reflects the wisdom of simplicity, where the focus is on the entire world with all its problems, gender relations and human dramas. Here, Kylián is like Mozart: he knows how to ‘speak’ about life in the language of dance, just as Mozart was able to do the same with his music.
“Mozart, whose music I have chosen for this production, is the greatest example of someone, whose life span was painfully limited, but who nevertheless understood life in all its richness, fantasy, clownery and madness. It is his spirit, and his acceptance of the fact, that our life is not more than a masquerade or a dress rehearsal for something deeper and much more meaningful, which has inspired me to make this work,” Jiří Kylián emphasized.
“Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a great impact on world musical culture. The composer wrote a lot of dance music, which was used both separately and as elements of larger works, such as operas, quartets and symphonies. It is known that Mozart himself was also very fond of dancing and did it quite often. His Sechs Deutsche Tänze is an absolute masterpiece, and the orchestra is working on it with great interest. I am sure that our audience will like this ballet,” Arman Urazgaliyev, music director and conductor of the production, said.
Very soon, the viewers, together with the dancers, will immerse themselves in a completely new and unknown world, created by Jiří Kylián, in which inner freedom and lightness, love and flirting, coquetry and buffoonery harmoniously coexist. Tickets are already on sale, and the opera house management notes that a full house is expected.
