Polish National Ballet / Teatr Wielki at the 2013 Dance Salad Festival in Houston, TX

Polish National Ballet/Teatr Wielki, Warsaw, the major ballet company in Poland, will come to Dance Salad Festival for the first time in the USA since 1980. They will only be performing in Houston. From March 2009, the PNB has been under the directorial leadership of internationally acclaimed choreographer, Krzysztof Pastor, who is also a resident choreographer at the Dutch National Ballet as well as the ballet director at the Lithuanian National Opera, Ballet. 

DSF audiences will see three USA Premieres of Pastor’s iconic work, And The Rain Will Pass…created in 2011 to the moving and dramatic music of Polish composer, Henryk Górecki. Moving Rooms was first created by Pastor for the Dutch National Ballet in 2008 and was recently premiered by Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, set to music by Alfred Schnittke and Henryk Górecki. Pastor’s Kurt Weill Suite was created in 2001 for the Dutch National Ballet. DSF presented a pas de deux from this major work in 2003. This year, Houston audiences will see three different major sections of this work. Rubi Pronk, an internationally acclaimed dancer will be featured in two works by Krzysztof Pastor. Also, we are excited to premiere a beautiful pas de deux from Persona created by Robert Bondara, a dancer and a rising choreographer of the Polish National Ballet. 

“Krzysztof Pastor’s ballet And the Rain Will Pass... is his very personal artistic statement. After a long stay abroad, he saw more scars and evidence of suffering in Warsaw than in any other city. He was inspired by images from literature and films showing traumatic moments in Polish history. Most importantly, however,...he chose the moving and dramatic music of Beatus vir, Quasi una fantasia, and Kleines Requiem für eine Polka by Górecki. The world premiere received a lot of publicity in Poland and internationally.” 

“This is a work of major importance: a fusion of dance, music and drama that marks a coming of age for the company…With this new ballet Krzysztof Pastor has given his homeland a precious gift: an epic ballet indelibly stamped with a Polish identity…. Situated between the ideological power blocks of fascism and communism, Poland has endured more than its fair share of tragedy. Pastor marks the recent modern history in ways that are subtle yet unmistakable and never didactic,” writes Maggie Foyer, senior dance critic of Dance Europe, 2011. “Rain is like compassion -- it wipes everything away: the blood from the battlefield, and people, and the air petrified with fear…” writes Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, the poet-insurgent, in his poem Deszcze [Rain] which Pastor used as an inspiration for his work. 

In Kurt Weill Suite, Pastor “…produced a multimedia show in the form of a collage of dance images. Taking the music of Kurt Weill, he has created a vibrant ballet fresco, inspiring in its dance expressiveness, diversity of musical forms and vocal hits, encouraging reflection on the social experience of the composer’s times, the changeable fate of artists, symptoms of intolerance, and constant longing for love." 

“…Kurt Weill attracted international attention and was nominated in three categories for the prestigious international dance award Benois de la Danse. The work takes one on a journey through the astonishing diversity of Weill’s oeuvre, ranging from orchestral to chamber music, from art song to Broadway musical. Pastor’s work is non-narrative; instead, it tellingly captures the atmosphere of the various different compositions, creating a beautiful balance between serenity and theatricality. Some of the solos and duets, in particular, are quite simply magnificent. In total, the piece is an excitingly rich choreographic invention coupled with an unaffected eloquence,” writes Roslyn Sulcas, dance critic of The New York Times, 2012. 

Moving Rooms was created in 2008 for the Dutch National Ballet. The world premiere, performed as part of the prestigious Holland Festival, was highly praised by Dutch critics and audiences. Pastor describes:” [Moving Rooms]refers to moving changing spaces...legibly defined by light. It affects the relationships between the dancers, creates their emotions. This play of light and movement within a changing space is the essence of my ballet…it is a pure play of moods and emotions in a dynamic composition of lights.” 

Sulcas describes it as: “Dark, literally and imaginatively…The mostly overhead lighting, by Bert Dalhuysen, alternately imprisons the dancers in brilliant cages, or swallows them in blackness, adding greatly to the enigmatic world that Mr. Pastor has created onstage,” The New York Times, 2012. 

Born in 1956, Krzysztof Pastor began his ballet training with the Polish National Ballet School in his home town of Gdansk. In 1983 Pastor became a soloist with Le Ballet de l’Opéra of Lyon in France. From 1985 to 1995, he danced with the Dutch National Ballet. After creating several ballets for the Dutch National Ballet’s workshop program, in 1992 he was asked to make a ballet for the company’s main program: the successful Shostakovich Chamber Symphony. Pastor has since then gained considerable recognition as an international choreographer, creating nearly fifty ballets to date including the highly acclaimed Do not go gentle … and in Light and Shadow the large-scale, full-length production Kurt Weil, Tristan, The Dangerous Liaisons, Don Giovanni as well as Symphony Fantastic for the Australian Ballet. 

In 2003, Pastor was appointed resident choreographer of the Dutch National Ballet. He has created ballets for many companies abroad such as the National Ballet of Lithuania, The Washington Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, The National Ballet of Latvia, the Polish National Ballet, Ballet Opera Dresden, The Israel Ballet, the Royal Flemish Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Ankara State Ballet, The Scottish Ballet and the Australian Ballet. In 1995, Pastor\'s ballet Detail IV won the Gold Choreography Prize of the Helsinki International Ballet Competition. In 2000 he was awarded the Medal of Merit by the Polish Ministry of Culture. In March 2009 Pastor was appointed director to the Polish National Ballet. Meanwhile, he continues as a resident choreographer to the Dutch National Ballet. www.teatrwielki.pl 

In Persona, set to music by Arvo Pärt, choreographer Robert Bondara questions the social autonomy of being human and existence. “To be a man means never to be oneself, claimed Gombrowicz. These words define the path that Robert Bondara tries to follow in Persona…” The choreographer explains: “Human existence is inextricably linked to functioning within certain sociocultural norms. This makes it necessary to adjust to existing models, which allows people to avoid conflicts and gain benefits in the form of a sense of being accepted. Thus, people put on masks, trying to play different roles, adapting to the attitudes and behaviors expected of them. Jung called this phenomenon the persona.

Robert Bondara is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher - an artist of the Polish National Ballet. He is a graduate of the Feliks Parnell State Ballet School in Lódź (2002). At first he appeared at the local Musical Theatre, then moved to the Teatr Wielki in Poznań. Finally, in September 2005, he joined the ballet company of the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera in Warsaw. He has been a coryphée of the Polish National Ballet since 2009. Bondara has choreographed several works for the PNB; Pastor wants him to do more work for the company to develop as a choreographer in residence. 

“[Polish National Ballet/ Teatr Wielki] has existed, in one form or another since 1785 when King Stanislaus Augustus formed the 30-strong group of His Majesty’s National Dancers. In the 19th century, the company ranked high among European troupes (both Filippo Taglioni and Enrico Cecchetti were directors), but Poland’s traumatic 20th-century wars and their consequences for the country have meant a low artistic profile on the dance front — and, for the most part, modest artistic ambitions. Yet how quickly things can change. Two decades after the end of Communism, and eight years after joining the European Union, the Polish National Ballet is performing a program as international and as challenging as any major company today,” summarizes Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, 2012. www.teatrwielki.pl

More on the festival and tickets at the website of Dance Salad Festival Houston International Dance Coalition
www.dancesalad.org