‘Unknown ballet’ delights music and theater lovers

‘Life is a dream’

TBy Cezary Owerkowicz

here are unknown works from known composers which have been discovered years or even centuries after their death. Some works discovered by chance are priceless in the history of music, such as the manuscripts of Bach found in the fish market as packing paper by composer Felix Mendelssohn or the result of years-long search at the bottom of archives, libraries, parishes by musician Indiana Jones, musicologists and archaeologists.

It is just that the treasure trove focus the attention of musicians and music lovers and is proclaimed as a sensation. Everybody likes to listen to, to know the way of discovery, or why, or how it was hidden, forgotten, to know the story behind the find.

Also sensational will be the discovery of unknown works of unknown or forgotten composers. Sometimes it looks like the find is (like the missing) ‘link of a chain’. However, at last I realized that there exists also a couple of works unknown even for the music composer. How can such a phenomenon be possible?

Ballet is an art oscillating between music and theater form; and rooted in both. Dance is as old as humanity. However the origin of ballet, scenic, professional dance is composed to specially written music as a spectacle which comes from the Italian Renaissance courts from the 15th and 16th centuries with essential help of Catherine of Medici ballet spread from Italy to France.

Here the ballet developed so much that many recognize France as a native country of that form and is even annually celebrated as the International Day of Dance whose patron is JeanGeorges Noverre, ballet master and choreographer in the court of Luis XV. (The paradox is that during his life he faced problems in Paris as … a foreigner and an immigrant, because his father was Swiss protestant!)

Owerkowicz

Spectacles

From the Royal court spectacles Jean-Baptist Lully cooperated with Moliere, throughout Romantic period with popular ballets up to Parisian Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets. Exactly! From France the art of ballet spread around the entire Europe and Russia (masterpieces by P. Tchaikovsky and fantastic ensembles) and soon crossed the ocean into America, especially with very contemporary or – musical ballets.

Many contemporary composers wrote music for ballet. Some of them already took their place in the history for this form. However sometimes it looks like ‘supply’ doesn’t answer the ‘demands’ (or expectations) of choreographers and – audiences.

I am a lover of Chopin’s music, one of the millions. Probably some of them are ballet people. Since quite a long time there were attempts to create ballet music from Chopin piano pieces, because almost the entire Chopin output is written for piano.

Chopin was even blamed by some of his compatriots that he doesn’t compose ‘national opera’. He loved Opera bel canto, and he wrote several songs for voice and piano but he was fully conscious that his language he will express everything that he likes as ‘piano language’.

First ever attempt to create ballet to his music was done at the end of 19th century (1892) in Russia by Michael Fokine. Son of the rich merchants, he was a talented dancer and choreographer as well as a passionate painter.

He chose music from several Chopin works, orchestrated by known Russian composer, Alexander Glazunov under name of Chopiniana Op. 46, introduced to the audience at the St, Petersburg Marinsky Theater under the baton of Nikolai, RimskyKorsakov, the other legendary Russian composer. The Ballet soon became widely known in Russia and the world as Les Sylphides (The Sylphs).

Success promoted Chopin’s ballet work (unknown for The Author!) throughout Europe, especially by Sergei Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets in Paris with such legendary ballerina as Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina.

Cooperation

The Paris version in 1909 was built with the cooperation (orchestration) of such composers as Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev and even Igor Stravinsky himself! It would be unfair not to mention about one of my favorite Opera Covent Garden where the great British prima-ballerina, Margot Fonteyn with Rudolf Nureyev presented the legendary production of The Sylphs. Also Frederick Ashton was wellknown interpreter of ‘Chopin’s Ballets’.

Chopin’s music became also very popular in the United States. His great interpreter Ignace Paderewski was a Superstar. Maybe under impression of Chopin’s success at the theater stage the New York City Ballet and its Master Jerome Robbins composed to Chopin music the next ballet.

The concert (also known under the name The Perils of Everybody) was in the end a great success for Robbins and the NY Ballet Co created subsequently three other ballets to Chopin’s piano music: Dances at a Gathering (1969), In the Night (1970) and Other Dances (1976).

Also the great contemporary Chopin’s compatriot, 20th century major European classic, Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994) never composed any original ballet music. However on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 the oldest British ballet ensemble, established in the 1920s the Ramber Dance Company presented at the Sadler’s Wells Theater its new production. It was ballet under the title ‘Life Is a Dream’ to the music composed by… Lutoslawski.

NB. Maria Ramber (1888-1982), who established that famous ensemble, was a dancer and pedagogue strongly connected with Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets in Paris. She participated in famous premiere of Rite of The Spring by Igor Stravinsky in 1913. She achieved much in popularization of ballet on Islands. She promoted such personalities as Frederick Ashton, Agnes de Mille or Harold Turner.

The choreographer of the new ballet, Kim Brandstrup from Denmark primarily was not familiar with Lutosławski’s music but he was strong at that time in Europe, influences of the modern (20th century) theatrical ‘gurus’ as Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor.

The canvas of the spectacle story is a philosophical drama Life is a Dream by Spanish Baroque Golden Era poet and playwright, Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). The spectacle balances between real life and illusion, treating about the limits of imagination.

The action took place in Poland. The young Prince Sigismund is jailed by father fearing for his throne. For one day only he got out for freedom and a clash with the real world provoked his brutal reaction. Grasped again and put to sleep he comes back to ward.

After waking up he doesn’t know anything that happened, it was only a dream. When he got a second chance he doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes. The choreographer creates on Calderon’s base the world on the border of fiction and reality

Freedom

A witness of the spectacle doesn’t know where we are at that moment. Both spaces are mixed. Illusion that we are ruling over reality with the help of supernatural powers which appear to be only an illusion. We are coming back to the corner where we are able to dream without limits.

Danish choreographer talks also about lack of freedom and longing for freedom, about rights to dream. It is universal and – Polish experience. Throughout such meanders leads us Lutosławski’s music performed by Ramber Orchestra under baton of Paul Hoskins. We are listening to Interludium for Orchestra, Chain No 2, Dancing Preludes and Symphony No 4 or even Lutosławski song I don’t expect now. (During WWII the composer played at the cafeteria but after ‘liberation’ earned his bread composing entertaining songs under a nickname; he was always ‘a controversial person’!)

Dancers of Ramber Dance Company perfectly read and transferred to the language of the dance character of Maestro’s music. Almost literally a physical contact with his works is seen on the stage, the same scenography done by Brothers Quay from the US and Holly Waddington costumes.

After very successful premiere the London Ensemble will perform the ballet in other centers of UK and soon will cross the Channel for tour in Europe. The Polish music and theater lovers are eagerly waiting to visit the unknown ballet by their famous composer — the unknown Ballet even for the composer himself.

Interesting what he would say about it? We can only guess. However Life Is a Dream and music is too, with or without limits, who knows….?

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His e-mail address is: cowerkowicz @yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@hotmail.com