Last Thursday the Harvard Dance Center was filled with vibrant energy as Boston Ballet dancers and artistic staff presented Boston Ballet Dance Talks: Kylián’s Black and White Ballets.
Boston Ballet dancers performed two full dance pieces, the dark and sculptural No More Play, and the light-hearted comic ballet Sechs Tanze, both choreographed by Jiří Kylián.
Guest speakers Roslyn Anderson and Kees Tjebbes of the Kylian Foundation joined Boston Ballet’s Anthony Randazzo, Ballet Master, and Shannon Parsley, Assistant Ballet Master and Artistic Coordinator, for a conversation about the works. Anderson, a former dancer with Nederlands Dans Theater, has been staging Kylián’s works since 1986. Tjebbes has designed the lighting and sets for Kylián’s works since 1979, both on Nederlands Dans Theater and on any other dance company that performs Kylián’s choreography.
Anderson explained that the distinctive shapes in No More Play were inspired by Alberto Giacometti’s gaunt, angular sculptures, while the antics of Sechs Tanze were the result of Kylián’s “choreographic doodling” while listening to Mozart. Tjebbes described how Kylián uses sets and lighting to add complexity to the dances through dramatic shadows that sometimes obscure all or part of a dancer, and blocks of light that evoke chess boards or footpaths.
After the onstage discussion, Anderson, Tjebbes, Randazzo, and Parsley fielded questions from the audience. Several people asked about the rehearsal process, and how dancers or stagers like Anderson remember so many ballets. Anderson explained that she almost never uses video footage to teach dancers choreography, preferring instead to demonstrate movement herself and talk about the choreography. “I don’t want the dancers to copy,” said Anderson, “I want them to bring their own personality to the dances.”
Randazzo and Parsley explained the process of reviving two Kylián works (Sarabande and Falling Angels) that the Boston Ballet last performed three years ago: since a fair number of the dancers performing those two pieces this year also performed them three years ago, those dancers watched a video of their previous performance, reconstructed the pieces from memory, and proceeded to then teach the choreography to new dancers in the company. All panelists emphasized the person-to-person nature of passing on choreography, stressing the importance of physically teaching choreography to others instead of relying on video or notation.
The final question of the evening was whether there was any overarching theme or concept to the entire “Black and White” series. Anderson replied, “Jiří Kylián never wanted to impose his ideas on an audience. The work is there, and everyone in the audience is free to take away something different from it.” Tjebbes added, “It’s about life.”
