Don’t know your ways? Buy two graves!
Direction and choreography: Marek Svobodník
Music: Josef Suk (Serenade for Strings in E flat major, Op. 6)
Stage set: Petr Siedlaczek
Costumes: Pavel Knolle
Light design: Karel Šimek
Assistant choreography: Igor Vejsada
Dance performance: 9 dancers
Duration: 30 minutes
Premiere: 22nd November 2020, 19:00, Vinohrady Theatre Prague (online stream 4th December 2020, 18:00, Mall.tv)
Dark slapstick comedy with a detective plot, loosely based on motives by Agatha Christie. The gentle music of Suk’s Serenade in E flat major underlines a bitter story of one well-off family whose eldest member dies unexpectedly. All would be „in order” unless the death was a murder. The story is also a satirical sketch of family disputes in which the grief over the loss is quickly replaced by a mutual grudge, suspicions and, most importantly, the desire to inherit property.
EPITAPH
Direction and choreography: Petr Zuska
Music: Antonín Dvořák (Concert for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, Op. 104)
Stage set: Petr Zuska and Pavel Knolle
Costumes: Pavel Knolle
Light design: Karel Šimek
Assistant choreography: Linda Svidró
Dance performance: 8 dancers
Duration: 40 minutes
Premiere: 22nd November 2020, 19:00, Vinohrady Theatre Prague (online stream 4th December 2020, 18:00, Mall.tv)
I got the inspiration for how to approach the Dvořák’s Concert in B minor for Cello from the composer himself, or rather from his relationship to Josefina Kounic, the love of his youth, whose disease and death influenced this piece of music deeply.
The second source of inspiration was another woman. A phenomenal British cellist Jacqueline du Pré whose musical interpretation I chose not only for its musical quality. Her extremely successful career started crumbling at her 25 years of age when she realised that she cannot feel her fingertips. Some years later she dies very prematurely, confined to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis…
I consider cello an instrument capable of “speaking”. And, in case of a magical interconnection of genius – both composer and musician, the words of the instrument become even clearer and more acute. This is the case of the pair Dvořák – du Pré. They have not met in the spacetime continuum, but they keep meeting in a much more substantial dimension.
The premiere is dedicated to “Jackie” who would celebrate her 75th birthday this year.
Petr Zuska