The Soldier's Tale. L'Histoire Du Soldat .

Format:

Video

Contributor:

Bloomsbury Press.

Language:

French

Subjects (All):

Ballet.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 video file)

Distribution:

London: Bloomsbury Video. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022.

Other Title:

Bloomsbury Video Library.

Place of Publication:

Vienna, Melbourne: Arthaus Music - Monarda Arts. 1989.

Biography/History:

The world-renowned choreographer Jirí Kylián (Czechoslovakia, 1947) has been artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater for nearly a quarter century. After having created three ballets for NDT (Viewers, Stoolgame and La Cathédrale Engloutie), Kylián became the company's artistic director in 1975 together with Hans Knill. In 1978 he and Carel Birnie founded NDT 2, meant to offer young dancers the opportunity to develop their skills and talents and focus on maturing their artistic personalities. In 1991 he initiated NDT 3; a company that created opportunities for older dancers. NDT stood out as the first company worldwide that showed the three dimensions of a dancer´s life. After an extraordinary record of service Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained the company's house choreographer until 2009. Since his last piece Mémoires d'Oubliettes for NDT in 2009, Kylián's creative focus has shifted to more small scale projects and films. Kylián's entire body of work counts 100 creations to date, of which 77 performed by NDT and no less than 75 were especially created for the company. Furthermore, he made pieces for companies worldwide such as the Stuttgart Ballet, the Opéra de Paris, the Munich Bayerisches Staatsballett, and the Tokyo Ballet. Kylián received many prestigious, international awards and honours, such as Officer of the Royal Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau, Honorary Medal of Order for Arts and Science of the House of Orange given to him by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix, honorary doctorate of the Juilliard School in New York and the Honorary Medal from the President of the Czech Republic. To this day, Kylián's masterpieces are frequently performed by numerous dance companies and schools around the world. .

Summary:

Jirí Kylián feels a great affinity for Stravinsky, who, like himself, was forced to leave his homeland. He describes the composer's music drama, <i>L'Histoire du Soldat</i>, as a 'surrealistic fairy tale for grown-up children'. His version of the piece uses the original French version libretto by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. With scenery and costumes by John MacFarlane, this studio recording features Nacho Duato as the soldier who sells his soul to the Devil for wealth, but is forced to wander the world. The onset of the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917 had drastic consequences for Stravinsky in his Swiss exile: his property was confi scated, and he thereby lost the rights to his works and the associated income, leaving him in a situation which isolated him as an artist. Stravinsky and his librettist for <i>L'Histoire du Soldat</i>, Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, had the idea of 'founding a travelling theatre which, with as little funding as possible, could be moved easily from place to place and perform in small meeting places.' It involved a street ballad-like series of scenes about a pact between a soldier and the devil which was 'to be read, played and danced'. The associated new work, with its diversity, its structure, the switching between narration, action, mime and dance, and its elements from tango, English Waltz and Ragtime, could not have been categorized under any genre which existed at the time. .

Credits:

Producer, Nederlands Dans Theater ; choreographer, Jirí Kylián.

ISBN:

9781350922006

OCLC:

1356503424

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.