Premiere TRANSPARADA

We are seeing two miniatures, a perfect combination of dance movements and Rossini’s music, sent to us from Italy, with love by Mauro Bigonzetti. Both are a tribute to the famous Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, to his musical talent, but also his gastronomic talent. The first scene is comical, gourmand, crazy. The second fragment that builds on the first duet is expressed through effective sculptural forms, celebrating female beauty and physiognomy, closeness and intimacy.

Ballet Allegro presents an open field of playfor the body, music and movement, it is a place of pure dance with a varied and rich range of moods and emotions. The allegro character of the music is transferred to the compositions and rhythms of the movements and gestures. At the same time it becomes a hub where newly arrived dancers’ strengths intertwine with the solid core of the experienced Rijeka Ballet Company.

This Duet is an extract from Odyssey, a piece based on Homer’s work but which is not limited to the simple staging of the adventures of Ulysses. The performance has two narrative themes that run parallel without ever meeting. In all this obviously the role of Athena could not be missing, which in our reinterpretation we decided to split into two distinct and complementary figures. In the Duet we observe Athena in a moment of reflection. A moment of intimacy in which she reflects on her actions and the consequences. Our deeply physical and athletic choreographic work aims at the exploration of the soul and its different forms. The goal is to establish an emotional connection with the viewer. The gesture as a vehicle for a message or an emotion that is never an end in itself.

Foniadakis’s Bolero to the music of the most famous of all boleros, that of Maurice Ravel, was premiered on November 2018 as part of the ballet project 4 Boleros, as a pre-programme of Rijeka 2020, the European Capital of Culture. Since then, Bolero has been delighting both audiences and critics. The Rijeka Ballet has been performing it for several consecutive seasons at almost all guest appearances, dance and gala festivals nationally and internationally. Foniadakis managed to transfer the repetitiveness of the rhythm to the trampolines, and precisely because of this, the five performers have a very demanding and difficult task of performing in the given rhythm, i.e. perfectly synchronised jumping and dancing on a small trampoline. Bolero belongs to the canonical musical works of the 20th century, which is why it has been a challenge for all generations of choreographers to enter into a dialogue with it. It is impossible to ignore the history in which bolero influenced and shaped the dance-choreographic language, and each new generation is constructing, in its own time and context, a different view and different meaning of the same.

Despite the unpredictability of the future, most people see predictions in a scientific or spiritual way. The future is frightening, so people are trying to make it brighter by the power of the materialisation of thought.

Numinous – causing spiritual, mysterious and/or religious emotions and at the same time Ominous – something bad is about to happen and Omen – a phenomenon that predicts the future.

Wouldn’t it be easier to become an android or a half-human, drowning out your feelings and emotions in order to live longer, not to go crazy, not afraid of what will happen, to always remain unshakable and emotionally stable in order to court your loved ones for longer and protect your own self. What would you choose, emptiness of feelings and long life, or emotions and rapid fading?

For the opening gala of the 2010 Dutch Dance Days, Goecke created a short pas de deux to music from Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, which premiered in 1910. What was then entirely in the character of the Russian fairy tale, the fight of the Tsarevich Ivan against the magician Kastschej to free the captive Zarewna and her playmates, Goecke reshapes into the encounter of two shy beings. As music he uses the lullaby with which the mythical firebird lulls the sorcerer and his company to sleep, and adds the triumphant finale. His duet can also be interpreted as a meeting of firebird and prince, two beings of different natures: a bird that dances and a human that flies. At a 2015 gala in Dortmund, Marco Goecke had two men dance it for the first time. In Rijeka version of Goecke Fire bird the audience will be seeing both paring possibilities.

As it goes in, so it goes out. Medium rare is the status I am in today, in the process of recovery and accepting the new reality, between lack and acceptance. The creative process was a tool for me to deal with the waves of longing for my first love and brought me closer to myself. A separation is a connection. Connection is precision.