Psychomachia

Liberec Ballet, 420PEOPLE, Alena Pešková, Jan P. Muchow... and for the first time in Liberec Jiří Kylián!

The ballet company of the Liberec theatre has prepared an exceptional dance evening for Tuesday 15 May. The invitation to Liberec was accepted by two renowned dancers Václav Kuneš and Nataša Novotná, who form the duo 420PEOPLE. They will bring with them - for the first time ever in Liberec - a project by the most famous Czech choreographer of today, Jiří Kylián, with the unusual title 27´52´´. Jiří Kylián created the choreography to the music of Dirk Haubrich, whose composition lasts exactly 27´52´´, for Nederlands Dans Theater II, on the 25th anniversary of the group's foundation. The world premiere took place in The Hague on February 1, 2002. Although the title refers to the duration of the work, the dancers, choreographer, production team including production and costume designers spent an incredible 4,418.75 hours on the preparation of the work at the time of the premiere.

"In the Czech Republic, therefore, you certainly have no better opportunity to see some of Kylián's works than in the performance of these two dancers... The strangely harsh sound of the musical accompaniment and the disturbing atmosphere of the work so engrossed me that the minutes flew by - I don't even know how. The air in the auditorium tingled with tension as the half-naked couple intertwined in strange yet beautiful movement creations and a variety of very distinctive lifts. Natasha Novotná's white-glowing body enchanted with its fragile beauty and Václav Kuneš, on the other hand, wildly and manfully permeated the whole space of the stage. And it was as if the man and woman on stage were not only revealing their bodies, but also their hidden inner selves, their thoughts and feelings." - Johanna Mücková

In addition to the 420PEOPLE dancers, the Liberec company and its director Alena Pešková will present two choreographies. The first of them is called The Bloody Bed and subtitled Eternal Murders and Weddings of Man and Woman, Heaven and Earth, Day and Night, Reason and Emotion... The production, on which its author Alena Pešková collaborated with musician Jan P. Muchow, was originally prepared for the ballet of the Prague State Opera, where it premiered in 2004. On 15 May, however, it will be the dancers from Liberec who will dance about the irreconcilably attractive and inseparably contradictory relationship between a man and a woman in a five-part production.

In addition to the two choreographies mentioned above, the audience can look forward to a unique dance experiment called Psychomachia. The project by Alena Pešková and the dancers from Liberec does not have a clearly defined form - it is a concept that will be created right in front of the audience. The inspiration came from the book of the same name by the Roman Christian poet Prudentius, which deals with the battle of the seven virtues and seven sins. Alena Pešková says about the project: every dancer has a choreography with a number, every light change has a number... every music track has a number... on stage someone is throwing dice or pulling numbers out of a bag... no one knows what is coming next... and how long it will take everyone to react... how they will accept virtue or sin... and how they will work with the NOTHING in between ... it is a connection of everyone including the masters of light and sound.