Oct. 12, 2011 - Issue #834: Protest in the riot
Prevue
PERE ET FILS
» Citie Ballet's homage to Henryk Górecki / Baos Photography
As a guest choreographer, Bartkowski returned to Edmonton again in 2011 with an idea to pay homage to Gorecki with a new series of ballets for Citie; the resulting presentation, titled Pere et Fils, will see its world premiere this weekend at the Timms Centre.
"Bartkowski has a very European style," explains Citie's artistic director Francois Chevennement. "It's movement from folk dance revamped and redone into his own style, which is a mixture of neoclassical ballet and Polish folk movement." Though if one isn't very familiar with Polish folk dance, Chevennement adds, it'd be tough to distinguish the hints of it in Bartkowski's work.
Citie Ballet's hour-long program includes three short pieces that salute the seminal Polish composer—though the music is not all Gorecki's own.
"Three ballets, three composers," says Chevennement, who actually first met Bartkowski as a young dancer in France; he performed in one of Bartkowski's first ballets, also a Gorecki piece. "The reason the full ballet isn't Gorecki is that the music is kind of heavy. We found two other composers that also use minimalist sound, Terry Riley and Arvo Pärt. Gorecki was considered a spiritual minimalist, so [his music] is all related to religion."
A heavy topic indeed. But Citie's presentation includes lighter fare to start: "Anul-Ka" is a lively duet between two sisters, actually based on Bartkowski's own daughters, and "Conversation Between" is a dance that examines the dynamics of the triangular relationship between three people (those who took in Citie's performances at the Kaleido Festival in September might remember this piece, with three dancers floating curiously on and around square cubes).
The third and most intriguing piece, called "Mother Do Not Cry," utilizes Citie's whole company of dancers. Scored by Gorecki's "Symphony No 3," with additional music from Mikolaij Gorecki—the composer's son—the piece is broken into four movements: Solitude, Desire, Dream and Deliverance. The original symphony was written in reference to a popular Polish story about a young girl who was put in jail during war and had written a prayer on the wall of her cell.
"It's pretty intense," Chevennement says. "The three pieces are all so different. There is a different mood in each, but the one that touches me the most is 'Mother Do Not Cry,' especially with the story behind it. It provokes such emotion.
"There is actually one song in it where I cry every time," he says, adding that the piece ends on a hopeful, uplifting note.
"For me, it's amazing to see a choreographer that I danced with over 20 years ago, along with a piece of Gorecki's music with another theme. It's fantastic from my point of view."
Sat, Oct 15 (7:30 pm); Sun, Oct 16 (2:30 pm)
Presented by Citie Ballet
Timms Centre for the Arts, $15 – $55 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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