Six Dances

Jiří Kylián / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"I've decided that I cannot simply create a dance series reflecting the composer's sense of humour and music genious. Instead, I've choreographed six visibly confusing scenes..." (Jiří Kylián)

In Kylián's ballet, Mozartian playfulness and absurd reality are transplanted into the language of movement. It was not a story that he set out to create, but rather a dance piece constructed out of the absurd situations encountered by heroes in powdered wigs who sometimes act irrationally and awkwardly: the very dictionary definition of the word "burlesque". From the first moment, the eight dancers take the stage like they are stepping out of a wax museum from Mozart's own era, and then the innovative freshness and dizzying dynamic of the choreography makes them ever more modern: timeless heroes of Kylián's absurd creative world.

Petite Mort

Jiří Kylián / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Jiří Kylián has always admired Mozart; over the course of his career, he has created a number of choreographed to the composer's music, including one from 1991 that paid homage to the genius of the 200th anniversary of his death.
Featured in this uniquely atmospheric ballet are six women, six men and six swords. In addition to the weapons, other props include black, baroque-style clothing and bizarre crinolines. The symbolic image in the dance piece presents a world where aggression, sexuality, silence, music, vulnerability, interdependence and eternal human beauty exist together in their own sense of poetry. This ballet from the choreographer's mature period is characterised by daring visuals, superb dance performances, elegance and style and has featured in the Hungarian National Ballet's repertoire since May 2013.

Whirling

András Lukács / Philip Glass

Whirling, a pas de deux by András Lukács, a former soloist with the Hungarian National Ballet is set to the music of Philip Glass, one of the greatest masters of repetitive music. The nearly fluid movement, the infinite harmony among the dancers and the unique style of choreography make the scene both quite exhausting and complicated. In 2010, the Hungarian National Ballet commissioned Lukács to create an expanded version for nine pairs.  Tastefully and thrillingly combining elements based on classical techniques with modern devices, Lukács primarily creates plotless choreographies that are highly expressive. In Whirling, along with the music, the spiralling movements of the dancing superbly illustrate a vortex of water: the water into which the suicidal Virginia Woolf casts herself to the music of Philip Glass in the film The Hours.

For his choreographic performance Petite Mort, Jiri Kilian, who is also called the “Picasso dance”, used two slow fragments from two of Mozart’s most famous concerts for piano. He deliberately cut out fast movements, leaving only slow music, helpless, like mutilated bodies, appearing to listeners and spectators. According to the choreographer himself, this is against all rules, but, nevertheless, it was decided to do just that. After all, the world around us is far from ideal and the rules are constantly violated. Jiri Kilian also decided to keep up with this general trend.

Indeed, since Mozart created his divine music, and to this day, many wars have occurred in the world, and rivers of blood have spilled under the “Bridge of Time”. In order to demonstrate male potency and a thirst for power (possession), swords were symbolically involved in the composition.

So, throughout our entire life, “Death” always accompanies us, sometimes it is “small” and sometimes “large”, but it is it that is our faithful companion from dawn to dusk of our life.