Marcia Haydée and Filip Barankiewicz. Source Czech National Ballet.
The first premiere of the 2019/2020 season will be Jiří Kylián’s avant-garde piece Gods and Dogs that will become part of the production KYLIÁN – Mosty času, replacing one of its current elements, The Symphony of Psalms. The mixed bill will thus consist of Gods and Dogs, Bella Figura, Petit Mort and Six Dances. In September 2019, the company plans to go on tour to Soul (South Korea) where it will perform Gods and Dogs for the first time at the Towol Arts Centre, in a mixed programme along with the Korean National Ballet. In November, the Korean National Ballet, headed by the Artistic Director Sue Jin Kang, will come to perform in Prague. It will present Kylián’s Forgotten Land that will also replace The Symphony of Psalms in KYLIÁN – Mosty času.
The second premiere of the upcoming season, the ballet Leonce and Lena, will take place at the Estates Theatre on 3 November 2019. The choreography by Christian Spuck, (Artistic Director of the Zürich Ballett) based on Georg Büchner‘s eponymous political satire (he is the author of the famous drama Vojcek) was first staged by the Aalto Ballet Essen in 2018. The ballet-comedy tells the story of melancholic, dreamy Leonce, prince of the kingdom Popo, and beautiful Lena, princess of the kingdom Pipi. The choreography has been presented on world’s great stages, such as Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal, Stuttgarter Ballet or Zürich Ballett.
On 20 February 2020, the National Theatre will host a revival of Onegin, the full-length ballet by John Cranko. The title has already featured in Czech National Ballet’s repertoire and now it returns. Puskin’s well-known novel allows for numerous ways of interpretation and the story still moves audiences all around the globe.
On the occasion of the reopening of the State Opera, the venue will host Czech National Ballet’s premiere of The Sleeping Beauty, staged by the legendary Marcia Haydée (21 May 2020). The third premiere of the season pays homage to this prominent prima ballerina and marks the beginning of the “new era” of the State Opera. The ballet based on the well-known fairy tale by Charles Perrault has all qualities of a great classical title. Marcia Haydée visited the company in January and met the dancers.
The fourth premiere titled Bon appétit! is a shared project of Laterna magika and the Czech National Ballet. The new dance-theatre piece by Jan Kodet will be created in collaboration with the directing duo SKUTR and composer Ivan Acher. The world premiere will take place on 2 April 2020 at the New Stage.
Jan Kodet and SKUTR (Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský) have also authored The Sorcerer’s Apprentice that returns to the National Theatre in a revived premiere. The core of the legend about a cruel sorcerer and his apprentices (and Krabat) lies in the emphasis on the importance of friendship, love and death.
The Czech National Ballet repertoire will also include the following titles: Swan Lake, Timeless, The Nutcracker – A Christmas Carol, Wayward Daughter, Valmont, Slavic Temper, Kafka: The Trial and Solo for the Two of Us. In the next season, we will miss the title Vertigo, for instance.
Source: Czech National Ballet
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species