Kyiv Modern Ballet presented its first premiere in a year of full-scale war

The premiere of the production “Tomorrow”, staged to the music of Chopin by the theatre’s principal ballet master, Honoured Artist of Ukraine and laureate of the 2016 Shevchenko Prize Radu Poklitaru, took place on the stage of the October Palace and drew a full house.  

Poklitaru’s new choreographic production was shown as part of an evening of one-act ballets. The evening opened with the already well-known ballet “Up the River”, set to the music of contemporary Ukrainian composer Oleksandr Rodin.

“Up the River” is a ballet based on Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, about a man who grew up in reverse. The first performances of this production took place almost six years ago — in April 2017.

In staging the ballet after Fitzgerald, Poklitaru somewhat altered the story known from the original tale and from David Fincher’s film adaptation of the same name. Here we also see an entirely Faustian character — the Man in Black, who “sets in motion” the protagonist’s living of life in reverse. And instead of a son, the “ballet Benjamin” has a daughter (Poklitaru noted earlier that he deliberately gives more of the action than in the original work to women: to the protagonist’s wife, mistress, daughter and granddaughter).

In the second part, the premiere was shown — the ballet “Tomorrow”. According to its creators, at the heart of the idea is a story about those who live here and now, about the fleetingness of time, about how our actions today shape our future tomorrow.

Thirteen artists are involved in Kyiv Modern Ballet’s new choreographic production. That evening one could see on stage both new members of the theatre and those who had left the company long before the start of the full-scale invasion and have now decided to return to Poklitaru’s productions. Among them is one of Kyiv Modern Ballet’s most renowned soloists, choreographer for music videos and film Oleksii Busko. A few years ago he was badly injured at one of the rehearsals and left the theatre.

If in the evening’s first production the audience followed a plot that unfolded amid sets and lighting design, and could take in the lavish costumes worn by the dancers, then in the second everything changed radically. There are no sets on stage at all, and the artists wear minimalist costumes — nothing distracts from the dance itself. So if “Up the River” is a story, then “Tomorrow” is synchronicity, pattern, technique. And a final message.

Poklitaru says that at the height of the war he did not want to show anything topical on stage; instead he sought to create “light” that would add resilience. That would program a happy tomorrow.

“We are currently living in very difficult times. It is hard to find a theme that would be in tune, in timbre and emotion, with what the entire Ukrainian people is going through. And indeed, is it necessary to search for one? That is why the idea of a topical plot-driven story was discarded straight away. It seems to me that the brighter and more luminous the cultural product created during the war, the easier it will be for everyone to get through this dark time emotionally”, the choreographer explains.

Mariia Kabatsii

UKRAINSKA PRAVDA