Stravinsky, Gluck, Mozart… Three influential composers meet through choreographies created to their music in this programme for fans of classical music and ballet. Firebirds is a new production focusing on female instincts with an ironic, grotesque undertone created to the music of Stravinsky by Marianna Venekei. Thierry Malandain’s Don Juan with music by Gluck is presented in Hungary for the first time, whereas two audience favourites, Petite mort and Six Dances by Jiří Kylián accompanied by Mozart’s melodies also return to the stage.

“Women innately find their own amorous nourishment like birds find seeds or fish. Driven by their instincts, they hover over lakes, river, seas and plains and then after complex swirling and circling manoeuvres, suddenly swoop down all at once and strike. At such times, their instincts and eyesight are both made marvellously evident. They very rarely miss, and it only infrequently occurs that the victim is stronger or more clever and able to slip out of their beaks like a tadpole from a gull’s bill. Then they squawk, just like a seagull, and soar upwards, hovering, circling, tirelessly and alertly.” Quoting this slightly ironic passage from Sándor Márai is Marianna Venekei, the choreographer of the new ballet Firebirds, based on the wonderful music of Igor Stravinsky.

Don Juan, for whom any woman was a target for seduction, was born in Spain during the Siglo de Oro. He has been seen as close to the Commedia dell'arte, considered as a free thinker, a melancolic womanizer, in search of absolute and barely exhausted by that literary pursuit which is so fascinating.

For Gluck and Angiolini, he is the libertine sketched by Molière. We keep these features while adding a few more recent expressiones. I like the idea of a character who is looking for Woman, through women. Unless he is looking for himself ? He should reasonably stop one day, and should fall really in love at last. But Don Juan is not reasonable. He does not respect anything or anyone and is blasphemous. To me, he is a mystic who nistead of finding fulfillment in the ecstasy of what is unique and stable, has to keep running to enjoy multiplicity. He is a man of action, feeding exclusively on the moments he spends next to someone else's body.

That is how he gets to know plenitude for a moment, beyond the object of his desire. Sensuality is for him the way to know eternity and it might only reside within himself : however, he does not stop to find out about it. He goes on until the Commander extends his hand to invite him to the kingdom of the Death. Might everything stop in an ecstatic rest, then ?

Thierry Malandain

Jiří Kylián has always admired Mozart; over the course of his career, he has created a number of choreographed to the composer's music, including one from 1991 that paid homage to the genius of the 200th anniversary of his death. Featured in this uniquely atmospheric ballet are six women, six men and six swords. In addition to the weapons, other props include black, baroque-style clothing and bizarre crinolines. The symbolic image in the dance piece presents a world where aggression, sexuality, silence, music, vulnerability, interdependence and eternal human beauty exist together in their own sense of poetry. This ballet from the choreographer's mature period is characterised by daring visuals, superb dance performances, elegance and style and has featured in the Hungarian National Ballet's repertoire since May 2013.

"I've decided that I cannot simply create a dance series reflecting the composer's sense of humour and music genious. Instead, I've choreographed six visibly confusing scenes..." (Jiří Kylián) In Kylián's ballet, Mozartian playfulness and absurd reality are transplanted into the language of movement. It was not a story that he set out to create, but rather a dance piece constructed out of the absurd situations encountered by heroes in powdered wigs who sometimes act irrationally and awkwardly: the very dictionary definition of the word "burlesque". From the first moment, the eight dancers take the stage like they are stepping out of a wax museum from Mozart's own era, and then the innovative freshness and dizzying dynamic of the choreography makes them ever more modern: timeless heroes of Kylián's absurd creative world.