Jiri Kylian: Ironic Dances

"Between our “Birth day” and our “Death day”, much time and energy, filled with creation, desire, love and confusion, is spent… and during much of this time we make fools of ourselves…" - says choreographer Jiri Kylian. And he confirms this thesis not only with serious, but also with his hooligan works.

SIX DANCES is brilliant miniature based on Mozart’s "Sechs Deutsche Tänze" is an ideal example of how funny theatre can be while remaining within the dance paradigm. And also it's an undoubted example of how music and movement can not just interact, but literally grow into each other. Powdered wigs recall the days of Mozart, and dance reminds us that movement, like laughter, prolongs life.

CAR-MEN is a story of young people – vivacious, passionate, and bursting with ambition, love and hate. The film is a metaphor for time, speed, stillness, movement, youth and age, while the story of Carmen is a timeless epic. The four dancers, all over the age of forty, play the four archetypes featured in the opera: Carmen, the restless seductress; Don José, the infatuated lover; Escamillo the philanderer, and Michaela, the good-hearted Samaritan. These characters, dressed as children, relive their past and tell their story in a surreal, tragicomic manner. Kylián and Paval Conen shot the film in summer 2006 in a Czech coal mine close to the German border. This lunar landscape, a place destroyed by human hands, provides a telling setting for the film. Kylián’s choreography was created mainly on site and exclusively for the film. Dutch composer Han Otten arranged Bizet’s music and added extra music specially composed for the film.

The dance farce BIRTH-DAY is another example of working with humor and with the camera. The action associated with the birthday of one of the heroines takes place “on stage” and “in the cinema” and takes the audience between absolutely hilarious mise-en-scenes and tragic monologues, between the “birthday” and the “death day”, when everything needs to be done...