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Symphony of Psalms (1978)

Music: Igor Stravinsky
Choreography: Jiri Kylian
Decor: William Katz
Costume Design: Joop Stokvis
Lighting Design: Joop Caboort

This piece lies closer to the Jiri Kylian of Forgotten Land, where earth and survival is problematic, but celebration and struggle still carries the imprimatur of the collective. A work now 25 years old, it speaks to those who hunger for depth treatment of themes interweaving exaltation and despair.

At curtain rise, eight women stand in the foreground, feet the width of their hips apart, heads down, subdued but purposive. On stage left and to the back chairs, narrow seats with high backs, hold eight men. Hanging behind them are rugs of varying sizes, layers of them, many with warm deep hues of scarlet, purchased in Dutch flea markets. Glenn Edgerton, the artistic executive director, said they were the original rugs and that one or two of them were determined to be valuable.

I would need viewing at least six times to begin to understand the marvels of this choreography. The men come forward as the women stand aside, one or two men drop to the floor in fetal position, the women surge forward from their ranks to join the men, there are waves of partnering and the women swing their legs above the men when they crouch, their skirts fluttering fans of fabric, as the men use the women's heads to turn them, or they lift them aloft. There are attitudes of despair, contractions worthy of any exponent of Graham, waves of open grand jetes by the men, arms swinging freely from the arm sockets, differing and similar movements in various sections of the stage. All sixteen dancers remain on stage throughout the work, but the surge and retreat makes this confinement unnoticed, because Kylian brings an emphasis to varying parts of the stage which distracts one from thinking everyone is confined by remaining on stage and not moving freely on or off stage. Without question a master work, I would like to see it more often.

Click-Pause-Silence (2000)

Music Concept: Jiri Kylian
Music Composition: Dirk Haubrich, J.S.Bach
Choreography: Jiri Kylian
Choreographer's Assistant: Glenn Edgerton
Decor: Jiri Kylian
Costumes: Joke Visser
Lighting Design Concept: Jiri Kylian
Lighting Realization: Kees Tjebbes

Nancy Euverink, Vaclaav Kunel, Patrick Marin, Stefan Zeromski

Three men and one woman inhabit a world where a mirror revolves, sporadically reflecting the scene, a video demonstrates dancers being rehearsed and a white canvas floor provides the under pinning for Kylian's work honoring a dancer who left the company after lengthy association.

Edgerton explained to several attentive writers that the canvas floor represented the stage, the mirror the class room and the video the work. "There is the work, the image is taken, and then everything is gone, and there is silence." The manner in which Kylian laid out the choreography was distinctly painterly, the elements of stage, props and bodies an abstraction, compelling in its clarity, permitting a laboratory-like examination of intricate partnering or sudden bursts of individual variation.

Walking Mad (2001)

Music: Maurice Ravel, Bolero Arvo Part, Fur Alina
Choreography: Johan Inger
Decor and Costume Design: Johan Inger
Lighting Design: Erik Berglund

We are confronted with yet another wall, this one grey and weather beaten, and also angled, a cast of three women and six men, and a choreographer whose wry wit knows the ways of hesitations and missed connections. It is difficult to describe how witty and cogent opening and closing doors, usually slammed, can be to the strains of Bolero's monotonous rhythm, or the bumping of bodies convulsively against the wall, trying to open a door once open but now resolutely shut. The figures, dressed in dark coats and bowler hats add to this conspiracy.
 

Johan Inger's Walking Mad
© John Ross

The men have their hand at trying to make a woman, who proceeds to dash in one direction,wait for the men to follow her; she joins the pack of the hunters, they totally oblivious of her tactics. The wall is knocked and then raised once more. One woman is left from this melee. She is approached by a man with whom she executes an extraordinary pas deux of longing,refusal, reconsideration, hesitation. He has progressed from hunter to suitor, to understanding, to longing and surrender. Still she hesitates. He reluctantly places bowler hat on his head, thrusts his body into a coat, looks at her, hoping she sees the signals. She is too engaged in her hesitations. She is oblivious, even as he scales the wall, pauses at the top before dropping behind it, leaving her in the indelible posture of emotional constipation marking those who lose opportunity in the excessive wallow of hesitation.