Everything is in the dark, as so often in Jiří Kylián’s dance pieces. Then you hear the click of a lighter, candles are lit, one after the other, the stage of the National Theater becomes a church. “Although this piece was created for young dancers, the theme of impermanence and death is constantly present,” said the Prague choreographer of “Un ballo,” which he created in 1991 for the Nederlands Dans Theater’s junior company. The spring matinee of the Heinz Bosl Foundation began on Sunday with this technically extremely demanding choreography, now danced by the Bavarian Junior Ballet Munich. As always, it was an energetic dance festival, and yet there was also great thoughtfulness. How else should it be these days.
In their work “You (Among Us)” Matteo Carvone and Jasmine Ellis, both from the independent dance scene, pose questions about hierarchies in ballet, about diversity in terms of origin and gender. This can be incredibly funny, casual and confident; when a tutu takes on a life of its own on stage, when the members of the multinational company step up to the microphone and greet each other in their own language, when they drill whistles or throw shoes at each other. This piece, which was worked out closely with the dancers, was certainly the most exciting of the morning, when the bachelor’s year of the ballet academy at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich also delighted with a large class concert. Or Maged Mohamed Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, performed by the Attaca Youth Orchestra, reinterpreted.
Dance to Perfection came from Rafaelle Queiroz. The young Brazilian, member of the Zurich Ballet, was awarded the Konstanze Vernon Prize 2022. Together with Thiago Bordin, she danced the “Messa da Requiem” of her former company boss, Christian Spuck, and lived up to every word of her laudator, the legendary ballerina Birgit Keil.
Fled from eastern Ukraine: Irina Khandazevskaya and her husband Anatolii Kkandazevkyi danced a highly elegant pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”.
(Photo: Marie-Laure Briane)
But the emotional highlight of this dance lunchtime came before the break. Irina Khandazevskaya and her husband Anatolii Kkandazevkyi danced a highly elegant pas de deux from the second act of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”. The pair of soloists from the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv fled the war in their homeland and can train at the Bosl Foundation. While admiring the pair’s technical perfection and poise on stage, one’s thoughts turn to Artyom Datshin, the principal dancer at the National Opera in Kyiv, who died in March from injuries sustained in a Russian attack. And also to another Ukrainian ballerino, Sergei Polunin, who last danced in Munich in January 2020. The man with the Putin tattoo on his chest and Igor Zelensky’s likeness on his shoulder is currently posting photos of the beach in Dubai to his fan community as if nothing were wrong.