Concerto Barocco
Music
Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto Barocco
Choreography
George Balanchine
Concerto Barocco
Ensemble
Two Violins
Piano
Cello
Duo Concertant
Music
Igor Stravinsky
Duo Concertant
Choreography
George Balanchine
Sechs Tänze
Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sechs Tänze
Choreography
Jiří Kylián
Location
The Smith Center
for the Performing Arts
This exciting program pairs the exploratory style of Kylián’s work with the weightiness and expansiveness of George Balanchine’s legendary choreographed works in a dramatic presentation. Jiří Kylián is recognized as one of the most beloved and influential Czech modern dance choreographers, celebrated for his extensive body of work created during his tenure as artistic director of the prestigious Nederlands Dans Theater. NBT is proud to present his work for the first time in The Company’s history.
Concerto Barocco
Concerto Barocco, set to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, featuring a quartet of strings on stage is one of George Balanchine’s greatest ballets offering imagery and music woven into gorgeous movement. Featuring two dancers depicting the instrumental solos fueled by a live double violin concerto and the exquisite music of Johann Sebastian Bach. First presented in 1948 by New York City Ballet, the revered work stands out as an important Balanchine ballet of the period.
Duo Concertant
Stravinsky’s score, Duo Concertant, conceived for violin and piano premiered in Berlin in 1932, and gained prominence across Europe. The piece had long been a favorite of Balanchine — who had first heard it performed soon after it was composed. Years later, Balanchine incorporated the haunting work into a piece he choreographed for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Inviting the merging of the musicians and dancers on stage is a hallmark of this work. Standing at the piano with the musicians, the dancers listen to the first movement. For three movements they dance, mirroring the music and each other in a brilliant back and forth, pausing at times to rejoin the musicians and to listen. In its finale, the stage goes dark and the dancers are illuminated one final time in singular light in dramatic conclusion.
Sechs Tänze (Six Dances)
Theatrical, humorous, and disarming, simple costumes arouse unexpected laughter for the slightly vaudevillian presentation of Kylián’s irreverent and amusing Sechs Tänze. Known as “Six Dances”, this work pokes fun at human behavior and emotion with great zeal. Featuring six nonsensical acts, this theatrical display whisks audiences into a raw display of nonsensical poetry. Set in a time of two centuries, this work reflects history shaped by wars, revolutions, and social upheavals, which is a theme that continues to resonate today.
Balanchine said of this work: “If the dance designer sees in the development of classical dancing a counterpart in the development of music and has studied them both, he will derive continual inspiration from great scores.” In the first movement of the concerto, the two ballerinas personify the violins, while a corps of eight women accompany them. In the second movement, a largo, the male dancer joins the leading woman in a pas de deux. In the concluding allegro section, the entire ensemble expresses the syncopation and rhythmic vitality of Bach’s music.
This work began as an exercise by Balanchine for the School of American Ballet and was performed by American Ballet Caravan on its historic tour of South America. Later it entered the repertory of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In 1951, Balanchine permanently eliminated the original costumes and dressed the dancers in practice clothes, probably the first appearance of what has come to be regarded as a signature Balanchine costume for contemporary works. On October 11, 1948, Concerto Barocco was one of three ballets on the program at New York City Ballet’s first performance.
Stravinsky dedicated Duo Concertant to Samuel Dushkin, a well-known violinist he met in 1931. The composer premiered the work with Dushkin in Berlin in 1932, and the pair gave recitals together across Europe for the next several years. The piece had long been a favorite of Balanchine — who had first heard it performed by Stravinsky and Dushkin soon after it was composed — but not until years later, when he was planning the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, did he decide to choreograph it.
The performance of the musicians on stage is integral to the conception of the ballet. Standing at the piano with the musicians, the dancers listen to the first movement. During the next three movements they dance, mirroring the music and each other, and pause several times to rejoin the musicians and to listen. In the final movement, the stage is darkened and the dancers perform within individual circles of light.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Balanchine is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. The School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, was the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration until October 11, 1948, when the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.
A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world.
Two centuries separate us from the time Mozart wrote his Sechs Tänze (German Dances)—a historical period shaped considerably by wars, revolutions and all sorts of social upheavals. Mozart’s ability to react upon difficult circumstances with a self-preserving outburst of nonsensical poetry is well known. With this in mind I found it impossible to simply create different dance numbers reflecting merely the humor and musical brilliance of the composer. Instead, I have set six seemingly nonsensical acts, which obviously ignore their surroundings. They are dwarfed in the face of the ever-present troubled world, which most of us for some unspecified reason carry in our souls.
Although the entertaining quality of Mozart’s Sechs Tänze enjoys great general popularity, it shouldn’t only be regarded as a burlesque. Its humor ought to serve as a vehicle to point toward our relative values.
– Jiří Kylián, Choreographer
The world-renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián has been Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theater for nearly a quarter century.
He started his dance career at the age of nine, at the School of the National Ballet in Prague. In 1962 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Conservatory. He left Prague when he received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in London in 1967. After this, he left to join the Stuttgart Ballett led by John Cranko. Kylián made his debut as a choreographer here with Paradox for the Noverre Gesellschaft. After having made three ballets for Nederlands Dans Theater (Viewers, Stoolgame and La Cathédrale Engloutie), he became artistic director of the company in 1975. In 1978 he put Nederlands Dans Theater on the international map with Sinfonietta. That same year, together with Carel Birnie, he founded Nederlands Dans Theater II, which served as a bridge between school and professional company life and was meant to give young dancers the opportunity to develop their skills and talents and to function as a breeding ground for young talent. He also initiated Nederlands Dans Theater III in 1991, the company for older dancers, above forty years of age. This three dimensional structure was unique in the world of dance. After an extraordinary record of service, Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained associated to the dance company as house choreographer until December 2009.
Jiří Kylián has created nearly 100 works of which many are performed all over the world. Kylián has not only made works for Nederlands Dans Theater, but also for the Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bayerisches Staatsoper Münich, Swedish television and the Tokyo Ballet. Kylián has worked with many creative personalities of international stature – composers: Arne Nordheim (Ariadne 1979), Toru Takemitsu (Dream Time 1983) – designers: Walter Nobbe (Sinfonietta 1978), Bill Katz (Symphony of Psalms 1978), John Macfarlane (Forgotten Land 1980), Michael Simon (Stepping Stones 1991), Atsushi Kitagawara (One of a Kind 1998), Susumu Shingu (Toss of a Dice 2005), Yoshiki Hishinuma (Zugvögel 2009).
To this day, Kylián’s masterpieces are frequently performed by numerous dance companies and schools around the world.
Header Concerto Barocco Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust by arrangement with the American rights holder, New York City Ballet. Featuring NBT Company Artists Shelby Rambo, Julia Pasquale and Alumni Emma McGirr. Photo by Virginia Trudeau.