Contemporary dance is thriving in Ostrava. Dancers and spectators alike are enjoying it

PURE JOY. Photo: Serghei Gherciu.

Author Lucie Dercsényi

The dramaturgical content of the performance corresponds exactly to its subtitle; there are indeed five faces of dance, presented by five artists whose works give a glimpse into the deep well of what dance art finds in the twenty-first century and what it captivates us with. Inventiveness, imagination, the play of lights and musical accompaniment that are in harmony with each other, new dimensions of theatrical perception and the perception of stage reality. Gradually, a palette of colourful shades of diverse dance textures shines through, which the choreographers apply to their "canvases" with expressive but also subtle strokes and notches that lay bare the tensions of the human mind and soul.

Although Justin Peck (1987), the author of the first piece Heatscape from 2015, does not fundamentally cross the boundaries of neoclassical morphology, his choreography is a detailed and lavishly constructed creation that demands from the performers alacrity in fluid step exchanges, technical precision of execution and relaxed expression, although the tempo of the allegro movement of Bohuslav Martinů's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.1 and the dance changes are almost murderous. Dancers in white tank tops of various cuts and dancers in light-coloured skirts stand out against a horizon of colourful mandalas. Martinů's music is full of exuberance that permeates the choreographic yarn, as well as lyrical moments of calm.

Ostrava Ballet premiered Heatscape already this April, when it was joined by two not very successful works in Rhapsody Bohemia. The current re-staging of Peck is justified, as it is an opus packed with ideas, energy, and challenging weaves, where one must not only accurately dig the pointe shoes into the floor, but also spin and jump in a tilted axis, and be able to quickly switch between precise hand control and lightly swinging them with penetration into space.

In Heatscape, everyone is a soloist, no one hides behind anyone. The choreography builds on the cohesion of the dance team, dominated by solos and duets performed by the mercurial and agile Rita Pires and the charismatic Francesco Fasano, with the suppleness of Gvendolin Nagy and Barnaby James Packham, and the breezy brio of Maria Carla Ognisanto, Edgar Navarro and Sachiya Takata. 

To be able to take off

As if from another world, Shino Sakurado comes on stage in black, loose pants and a purple corset. Originally built for Scapino Ballet Rotterdam in 2010, Marc Goecke's duet from The Firebird works with a radically different aesthetic to the previous opus. Elegant lines and beauty are replaced by neurotic arm swings, with the ballerina standing with her back to the audience, giving the impression of a wounded bird. Her arms are like broken wings, drooping one moment, and the dancer's body, head bowed, evokes a helpless creature resigned to its fate. As Goecke himself states in the program booklet, „Someone must disturb, elude, go deeper inside us...“

Igor Stravinsky's music originally corresponded to the character of the Russian fairy tale about the sorcerer Kostei the Immortal and his clash with Tsarevich Ivan, about the liberation of an enchanted beauty and her companions. Goecke's duet is about the meeting of two beings, shy and closed, unable to communicate. From Stravinsky's ballet he chose the lullaby with which the mythical bird Firebird lulls the magician and his companions to sleep. As the German dance critic Volkmar Draeger writes, „the duet can also be interpreted as the meeting of the Firebird and the Prince, two beings of different natures: the bird that dances and the man who flies“.

If one does not accept this interpretation, one can view Goecke's pas de deux, first danced by a heterogeneous couple and then, after an intermission, by a male couple, as capturing alienation and the inability to harmonize in movement and spirit. The encapsulation of emotion in the body is expressed almost incessantly by the jerky movements of the hands, which are rehearsed after the dancer by her/his partner with her/his torso exposed. Only at one point do they touch each other fleetingly, as one's hand runs up the other's spine (as if caressing it with a wing), only for each to return to himself, to his own restless radiating interior. At a certain point the bodies of the pair become one, merging into one being, then separating, drifting apart in silence, and at the very end, pulling their heads back in shame and moving away from each other.

Goecke says that Stravinsky „does not show his heart“ and that the choreography sends a palpable chill into the audience, which at the same time paralyses, overwhelms and intensifies the emotions. First in a suggestive performance by Shino Sakurado with Rei Masatomi, then after the interval in an equally urgent male cast of Gene Goodman and Giuseppe Iodice.

Liberal chaos

The world premiere in Ostrava was created by Lea Bessoudo Greck (1994), although the youngest of the choreographic five, she presented a mature composition and showed that she has great talent. She transformed the third symphonic poem Šárka from Bedřich Smetana's cycle My Country into dance. His composition is epic, describing the well-known tale of Ctirad, the courageous Vlasta and the seductive Šárka. The dramatic and emotional piece was a driving force for the choreographer. Greck abandons the narrative on which Smetana was based and plays out a passionate discourse between the male and female sex on stage.

The ten women and men are a separate entity. Each group has its own energy, animality and desire to move and breathe freely. The scenic landscape with black pylons gives the impression of an endless horizon. At first, we see only the torsos of the dancers peeking out from behind them, surrendering their bodily gravity to the floor, slowly pushing off with their arms and raising their heads and backs. When they hide, they show their legs, their toes extended, and when they surrender the weight of their bodies to the ground, the columns come up and the dancers begin to dominate the space. With vigour, confidence and great verve, each becomes herself.

Men, too, subsequently show their sovereignty, animality and instinct. The female performers are wearing transparent red cut-outs, the men are dressed in black. A contrast of colours, a contrast of moods, a contrast between what pulls us down and what beckons us up. The masculine and feminine worlds, however, contain the same call for freedom and expression of the individual - so, after all, is the choreography itself constructed, which, even in synchronous sequences dominated by outstretched arms, sometimes clenched into fists, sometimes cutting sharply through space, leaves room for the dancers and dancers to decide where and how to enclose a gesture or position, standing or on the ground.

This liberal chaos of dancing energy is very catchy, suggestive, and most importantly, telling of the human yearning for reconciliation with oneself and others. It is obvious that Lea Bessoudo Greck, originally from the land of the Gallic Cock, has, in addition to the typical playfulness of the French, the experience of being a member of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company captured in her body. She absorbed that special animalistic flow that belongs to Israeli dance, and at the same time she managed to capture the Czech, Smetana's music with a highly musical sensibility, not missing a note, and moreover she gave new meanings to Šárka, with the masculine force perfectly captured in the solo by Giuseppe Iodice, the clarinet and cello melody in the duet felt by Yu Matsumoto and Rei Masatomi.

On the wings of wax

Wings of Wax, premiered in 1997 at Nederlands Dans Theater, fits the thematic, dance and artistic selection of the evening. Jiří Kylián (b. 1947) in these works affected the ephemerality and limits of physical and mental existence, representing the everyday reality of the dancer's life, whose body is a living instrument for the choreographer's testimony.

Four couples enter the stage in turn, the women in tight-fitting full-length tops (black, burgundy, purple), their counterparts in dark tops and trousers, under which their well-developed, slender bodies are revealed. A tree hangs rooted up above the stage, a large spotlight circles the playing area. Its trajectory is unchanging, relentlessly regular, as if it were measuring time and defining the space for dance actions. Four couples are presented on stage in turn, each working with different relational constellations, but all duets are tied to partner interplay, precision in touch, gripping their partner so that they fly smoothly over the ground, slide across it or soar upwards in a great arc. The movement counterpoint is distinctive, for example, when two dancers slowly run in place for a longer period of time, and at the same time their partners accelerate their solos on stage.

Precisely set lighting, selected musical items are indispensable elements of a choreography rich in details that must not only be captured, but also given a subtext. Each weave carries with it an emotion, from the joyful to the painful, where the beauty of Kylián's choreography does not fade, but the feelings experienced by performers and spectators change. Wings of Wax requires precision of execution, technical brilliance, and the ability to be internally engaged, as encouraged by the works of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, John Cage, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The musical selections represent different eras and leave a distinct acoustic trace in concert with the dancers' bodies - Aurora Donadiós, Laura Moreno Gasulla, Yu Matsumoto, Shino Sakurada, Francesco Fasano, Rei Masatomi, Barnaby James Packham and Sachiya Takano - who have embraced Kylian's choreography with technical and expressive excellence.

The evening closes with Itzik Galili's Sofa from 1995, a humorous piece from Through Nana's Eyes. Flipping over the sofa on which a man first tried to seduce a woman danced by Natalia Adamska in a sporting set, we are put in a different situation and the original disputation is reprised in a purely male performance by Mark Griffiths and Francesco Fasano. This lightening up concludes with the premiere of dancENJOY, which shows the excellent condition of the Ostrava Ballet, whose enthusiasm is present on stage and in the auditorium.

Written from the premiere on 17 October 2024, Jiří Myron Theatre, Ostrava.

PURE JOY

Five Faces of Dance
 

Heatscape 

Choreography: Justin Peck

Assistant Choreographer: Eric Trope

Music: Bohuslav Martinů, Piano Concerto No. 1, H 149

Set: Shepard Fairey

Costumes: Reid Barthelme, Harriet Jung

Lighting Design: Brandon Stirling Baker

Lighting Design Realisation: Daniel Tesař

Duet from Firebird

Choreography: Marco Goecke

Music: Igor Stravinsky, Firebird - Lullaby

Assistant Choreography: Rosario Guerra, Nicole Kohlmann

Lighting design: Udo Haberland

Lighting Design realisation: Nicole Kohlmann, Ondřej Šesták

Šárka

Choreography: Lea Bessoudo Greck

Assistant Choreographer: Nadav Gal

Music: Bedřich Smetana, symphonic poem Šárka from the cycle My Country

Set: Lea Bessoudo Greck (concept), Pavel Knolle

Costumes: Pavel Knolle

Lighting design: Lea Bessoudo Greck (concept), Ondřej Šesták

Wings of Wax

Choreography: Jiří Kylián

Music: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber - Passacaglia for solo violin (1676); John Cage - Meditation Prelude, arranged for piano (1946-1948); Philip Glass - String Quartet No. 5, 3rd movement (1991); Johann Sebastian Bach - Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, Variation No. 25 (Adagio in A minor arranged by Dmitri Sitkovetsky for strings (1742))

Choreography Assistant: Nataša Novotná, Stefan Žeromski

Scene design: Jiří Kylián (concept), Michael Simon

Lighting design: Michael Simon

Costumes: Joke Visser

Technical supervision: Joost Biegelaar

Sofa

Choreography: Itzik Galili

Music: Tom Waits, Nobody (album Nighthawks at the Diner - 1975)

Scene: Janco van Barneveld