by JOHANA MUCKOVA
Gender-bent, her love unrequited, a girl withers and moves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoaclYDKgag
The National Theater is welcoming the new year with open arms and an “Open Stage.” The cycle focuses on inviting various dance companies for guest appearances. The first in line is the National Theater Brno ballet with Lucidor and Arabella, an original work created by the Hungarian choreographer Youri Vámos. This full-length narrative ballet is based on the story by Hugo van Hofmannsthal and set to music by Alexander Glazunov.
An internationally acclaimed choreographer and the former artistic director of Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Vámos is often called “the last ballet narrator.” He has been a prolific author and so far has created many grand narratives that always fill the auditorium. He has been creating adaptations of plays and novels (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) as well as modernized classical works (Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppélia). Vámos ranks among the very few leading European choreographers dedicated to preserving full-length ballets. In past seasons, Prague audiences have had the opportunity to see his productions in the repertoire of local theaters: recently, for example, The Nutcracker, Othello and Sleeping Beauty – The Czar’s Last Daughter in the National Theater and the State Opera.
Now the Moravian ballet company will come to town to present the piece that had its Czech premiere in October in Brno. The storyline of this ballet, set in the late 19th century, revolves around the dramatic fate of a girl named Lucile. The story was written by the prominent Austrian novelist, librettist, poet and essayist Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1910. He later reworked it as a libretto for the Richard Strauss opera Arabella, which premiered in 1933. Lucile’s mother is drowning in debt. In order to obtain an inheritance intended for the youngest male descendant, she forces Lucile to hide her true identity, to deny her femininity, to dress and act like a man: Lucidor. During adolescence, Lucidor meets the love of her life, her sister Arabella’s admirer Vladimir, to whom she writes on the behalf of her undisguisedly feminine sibling.
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