Dear audience!
The art of depicting an entire story through just a single movement – this is the mastery of Jiří Kylián. His phrasing, musicality and creativity have given us more than a hundred compelling works, where imagery, movement, and music fuse together. Dancing Kylián’s works gives the experience of being in contact with something deeply fundamental – both as a human and as dance itself.
This is the legacy of ballets that the Norwegian National Ballet is now undertaking.
Wings of Time is the most comprehensive collection of Jiří Kylián’s life and work ever presented. To display the artistry of the world’s foremost dance poet – stretching from his early ballets to newer expressions – feels monumental. In recent years, Kylián has extended into other art forms. With this festival, we erase the boundaries and present him as a creator of today.
Wings of Time is also a celebration of the close collaboration between Kylián and the Norwegian National Ballet over the last four decades.
It all began under the artistic direction of Anne Borg with Symphony in D (1986), with Paul Podolski as the company administrator, and continued with Dinna Bjørn, who secured the first full evening of Kylián’s works in 1999. Under Espen Giljane, the relationship grew – and of course, it was Kylián who would inaugurate the Main Stage of our new opera house with the first ballet performance in Bjørvika in 2008.
Throughout these years, Jiří has bound together generations of dancers. As individuals and as a company, we have been stretched through our encounters with Kylián’s dance – and the Norwegian audience embraced his works wholeheartedly already long.
What is it about Kylián’s art that resonates with so many of us? Perhaps it’s a deep sense of recognition. It's as if life in all its fragility is painted before our eyes, as he explores the borders between darkness and light, reason and madness, life and death – and the short distance from solemnity to laughter.
The choreographic works shown during the festival range from Symphony of Psalms (1978) to Gods and Dogs (2008) and showcase the breadth of Kylian's ballets.
During Wings of Time, we open up new spaces – both literally and metaphorically – as the opera house frames the richness of his imagination: from film to photography, sculpture to installations, woven together with live music and dance.
Already in 2008, Kylián saw the possibilities held within our magnificent building and took the audience on a journey behind and beneath the stage as part of Worlds Beyond. With Wings of Time, he reexplores the unique and egalitarian sides of our opera house: He opens for dancing on the roof, behind the scenes we experience his new art installations – while on the stages, Kylián’s choreographic legacy resonates.
Joining us we have Snøhetta and Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, the architects behind our opera house, playing a key role in realizing Kylián’s visions. Essential to the project is also trumpeter and composer Nils Petter Molvær, whose music will complete the experience during Kylián’s films and installations.
This festival is a journey of discovery through Kylián’s theatrical world, visualized for us by the master himself, his brilliant team – and the people of each and every department of this opera house. Just as Kylián has been defining for both our dancers and audience alike, he also holds a special meaning for a whole host of individuals who work here.
They say that dance is a fleeting art form. But Kylián always gives me an impression as if time stands still, like he creates for eternity. When the sculptures in Moving Still seemingly float through the glass façade, it’s as though a single moment is frozen in time. These eight bodies are casts of dancers who Jiří Kylián created his iconic ballets on, and who today serve as stagers for his ballets.
Whilst the sculptures are being mounted on the glass façade, the models for these pieces of art stand very much alive in our studios, rehearsing Kylián’s works together with the dancers. Now passing his legacy on to the future generations.
In contrast to the fleeting moment, Wings of Time embodies something enduring. Jiří Kylián’s influence weaves like a thread through the history of the Norwegian National Ballet – and continues to do so.
Welcome to the festival!
Yesterday