“Nine Dates” by Radu Poklitaru, or dance stories to the music of Chopin
The new one-act ballet “Nine Dates”, presented on January 27, was created by Radu Poklitaru to the music of Frédéric Chopin’s piano preludes.
The production continues the choreographer’s line of one-act ballets, among them «Two on a Swing» set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Chavela Vargas, «Quartet-à-tête» set to music by Ad Maas, «Women in D Minor» set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, «Up the River» set to music by Oleksandr Rodin, «Rain» set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach and the peoples of the world, and others.
Compared with his large-scale, ensemble compositions (for example, «Crossroads», «Viy» or «The Sleeping Beauty»), Poklitaru’s chamber ballets are stripped of intricate dramaturgy and focus even more closely on the inner world of the individual.
«Nine Dates» has only three principal characters: a pair of young lovers (at the premiere: She – Olena Saltykova, He – Artem Shoshyn) and the Old Woman (Anastasiia Dobrovolska). The author masterfully portrays a selection of varied pictures of relationships between people – difficult and painful, warm and trusting. At the same time, the enigmatic Old Woman tirelessly paces about the stage, so the conflict between youth and age, inexperience and wisdom, energy and calm, beginning and end remains the leitmotif of the production.
Beyond the lyrical theme, the ballet holds a philosophical idea of time and eternity. After the productions «Crossroads» (2012) and «The Long Christmas Dinner» (2014), Radu Poklitaru turns to it once again.
The piano preludes of Frédéric Chopin from the cycle of 24 preludes, op. 28, chosen by the choreographer as the accompaniment to the choreographic stories, correspond as closely as possible to the lyrical idea of the ballet and to its cyclical form. The sequence of preludes that Radu Poklitaru chose for the production is set within the compositional arc of Chopin’s cycle, though – apart from the first and last numbers – it is not preserved. Thus, the first date in the ballet coincides with the first prelude in C major, which aptly underscores the young people’s agitation. And the final meeting takes place to the sounds of the D-minor prelude (No. 24), whose stirring pathos reflects the happy and passionate union of the couple.
Beyond the music, the performance breathes with other sounds as well: the tapping of fingers, the noise of the city, a child’s crying, sighs, laughter and simply silence. This helps to create the impression of living reality and draws the viewer even more deeply into the story.
Together with the young and lyrical ballet «Nine Dates», the comic veteran production «In pivo veritas», set to Irish folk music and music of the Renaissance era, will now and henceforth run on the stage of the Kyiv Opera in Podil. An hour and a half of genuine laughter («In pivo veritas») and tears («Nine Dates») – ballets radically different in emotion – share a common point of support: the image of youth in all its manifestations.
Nataliia NOSACHENKO, Ukrainian online magazine "Music"
