Ballet of the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor: Carmina Burana and The Rite of Spring

Carmina Burana

Choreography: Edward Clug
Music : Carl Orff
Set: Marko Japelj
Costume: Leo Kulaš
Lighting design: Tomaž Premzl
Assistants to the choreographer: Matjaž Marin, Sergiu Moga

The show lasts 1 hour and has no break.
Premiere: May 16, 2021
dance spectacle

SYNOPSIS

Edward Clug revisits a fundamentally humanizing 20th century work with the power to bring people together, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, inspired by medieval verse. The work’s introduction, O Fortuna, evokes the World's destiny while Man is powerless in facing its uncertain future.

Firmly anchored in modernity choreographer Edward Clug reflects, first, the implicit torment of Carmina Burana, but more importantly springtime, hope and love, central themes in the work, which touches human beings in their most visceral dimension, that of their legacy, and longevity.

From the choreographer's notebook:

At the initiative of Ivan Cavallari, artistic director of the Grand Canadian Ballet in Montreal (Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal), the idea of ​​choreographing the famous stage cantata Carmina Burana by Carl Orff seemed at first absurd, probably due to prejudice. I had them about the nature of Orff’s music. However, upon closer examination of the musical record, my prejudices proved unfounded, so I am still grateful for that experience today. The biggest challenge was to find personal meaning, personal story within Orff's monumental work, and to avoid duplicating what text and music alone "confess" in a way.

The driving force of choreography, following the content of various texts from the medieval manuscript Codex Buranus, is the parallelism between the cycles of nature, especially during the spring awakening of nature, and human life and lust. It is the awakening of lust in the young body, which longs for the forbidden and unattainable (fruit), that represents the movement tension of the journey through twenty-four "songs". The shape that spontaneously emerged was a circle that coincided with the circle of happiness from the first song of O Fortuna and was created by thirty dancers, each striving for the core of this perfect natural form. The narrower the circle, the more tension and force permeates its core.

Symbolically kneaded, Orff's stage cantata is undoubtedly still an extremely popular work today, in which I sought mainly spontaneous movement impulses that would address the viewer during the unfolding of the musical flow and unobtrusively include him in this constantly revolving circle of life. Especially in these times of great challenges and personal patience, he revived and was reborn through a shared theatrical experience. Orff's own setting of a variety of songs offers virtually countless interpretations of the existential question of what happiness, life and love really are, none of which are wrong - but certainly no interpretation is the only correct and universal one.

The dance project offers plenty of breath-taking images in the scenography of Marko Japlj. With the uncertain future of theatrical life, I only want visitors to see the play live as soon as possible, because it is the spectators who close our circle, we need them so that our world can come to life again in a common theatrical experience.

Edward Clug

When enrolling at the National ballet school in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in 1983, the child of 10 years of age saw a way out from the repressive dictatorship of Ceausescu. After very harsh years during schooling, the communist regime collapses in 1989. Two years after in 1991 he completed his studies, and in September of the same year, he tried his chance at the Slovene National Theatre in Maribor, where he got his first engagement and started his career when Slovenia made its first steps as a newborn country after exiting Yugoslavia.

Here he met famous Slovene theatre director Tomaž Pandur, with whom he started to collaborate as a dancer in his avant-garde productions. Noticing his creative potential Pandur asked him to create the choreography for the performance Babylon, which premiered in 1996.

After his first choreographic experience, Clug embarks on a new artistic journey and in 1998 he creates his first independent project Tango, together with costume designer Leo Kulaš and set designer Marko Japelj, who became his constant creative team. Later in 2008 composer Milko Lazar joins the team in the project Prêt-à-porter and they continue to collaborate intensively ever since.

In 2003 the newly appointed general director of SNT, Danilo Rošker assigned him as artistic director of the ballet and Clug starts to lead the company towards new and distinctive directions. In 2005, he created Radio & Juliet on the music of Radiohead, which became an international hit and drew the international attention due to his specific choreographic style. He started to collaborate with other ballet companies around the world and equally succeeded in putting the Maribor Ballet ensemble on the international dancing map. The Ballet of the SNG Maribor participated in the largest theatre festivals throughout the world performing his choreographies: Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (USA), The Stars of the White Nights Festival in Mariinsky theatre St. Petersburg, Festival of Firsts in Pittsburgh, Arts Festival in Singapore, Biarritz Festival in France, O Botiçario di danza in Brazil, Dance Festival in Tel Aviv, Sintra Festival in Portugal, Festival Des Arts de Saint-Sauveur (Canada), Seoul International Dance Festival (Korea), at the Milan Teatro Piccolo, Dance Open Festival in St. Petersburg and toured Netherlands, Italy, and the countries of former Yugoslavia.

Throughout the years, Clug has developed a strong relation with prestigious Stuttgart Ballet and Zurich Ballet, where he created in 2018 the much-acclaimed full-length ballet Faust.

In the last years, he also started a successful collaboration with the Netherlands Dance Theatre where he created several projects for NDT (I & II). The most recent one Aperture for NDT I, received rave reactions from both critics and public. He was also invited to create new works for Bolshoi Ballet Moscow, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Vienna State Ballet, National Ballet in Lisbon, Grand Ballets Canadiens Montréal, Station Zuid Company, Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb, Croatian National Ballet in Rijeka, National Ballet in Bucharest, Aalto Ballett Essen, Bitef Dance Company Belgrade, Graz Tanz, Ukrainian National Ballet Kiev, Staatsballett am Gärtnerplatz Munich, Augsburg Ballet, Hessisches Staatsballett Wiesbaden, West Australian Ballet in Perth, Novosibirsk State Ballet and Dortmund Ballet. In 2021 he will create a full-length ballet for Bolshoi Ballet, based on Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita. Premiere will take place on 1st of December.

He received several national and international awards for his work and was nominated for the Golden Mask award in 2010 for the project Quattro. He was distinguished with the highest Slovene prizes in culture, the Prešern Foundation Award in 2005 and the Glazer Charter in 2008. He was nominated in 2017 for the prestigious award "Benois de la danse” for the piece Handman with Nederland’s Dance Theatre II and in 2019 for the German Theatre Prize "Der Faust” for the piece Patterns in ¾ with Stuttgart Ballet.

Considered one of the most famous pieces of classical music (scenic cantatas), Carmina Burana by the German composer Carl Orff (1895–1982) was written in 1936 during the Naci rise to power, even though the Third Reich labelled Orff's work as degenerate music (Entartetete Musik). With Carmina Burana – in a manner similar to that previously employed by Richard Wagner with his idea of a total, comprehensive artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) – Orff subscribed to the dramatic concept of "Theatrum Mundi" – the Great Theatre of the World in which music, movement and speech are closely and virtually inextricably intertwined. In following this artistic formula, Orff consequently modified the musical flow to the extent where music as a sonic phenomenon can receive its full expression only in a dramatic context, an intention which modern performances of Carmina Burana in purely concert form are generally unable to accomplish. 

With this complex work, whose full Latin title reads Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis (Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images), Orff created a unique scenic work with a specific dramaturgy based on a selection of twenty-four poems from the preserved medieval manuscript of 254 poems written by travelling students in secular Latin, Middle High German and Old French between the 11th and 13th centuries.
The dramaturgy focuses primarily on sequencing individual episodes, which vary significantly in terms of both content and character, and not so much on progressively structuring a musical whole (in the strictly classical sense). It is thus only natural that in Carmina Burana Orff consciously avoids excessively complex harmonies in favor of the immediate effect of the sung text, an effect frequently manifested in the emotionally charged moments and unusually high vocal registers of all three solo parts (e.g., the tenor aria Olim lacus colueram, the "falsetto" aria for baritone Dies, nox et omnia and the aria for soprano Dulcissime).  

Carmina Burana is part of Trionfi, a musical triptych that also includes Catulli Carmina (Songs of Catullus) and Trionfo di Afrodite (Triumph of Aphrodite). Orff was influenced melodically by the relatively simple but dramatically effective late Renaissance and early Baroque models, especially the madrigals by William Byrd and Claudio Monteverdi. Orff’s shimmering orchestration, which does not fail to incorporate pompous dramatic moments, including the opening movement O Fortuna, velut luna statu variabilis (O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable), is strongly reminiscent of Stravinsky's earlier work, Les noces (The Wedding) – that takes rhythm as its main musical element. Rhythm is also vital in determining the entry point at which Edward Clug, in his signature artistic style, embarks on his inspiring choreographic exploration of the medieval mysteries of life and different perspectives on life, which even in the proverbially "dark" Middle Ages were often very liberal and actually indistinguishable from modern hedonism.  

Clug’s core visual element, expanded to reach a meaningful choreographic dimension, is the circle. As a geometric figure, the circle is nature’s simplest and most perfect creation (stars and planets are spherical in shape, heavenly bodies move in a circular or elliptical orbit). The circle also symbolizes ontological perfection and cyclical nature of existence, i.e., the perpetual transition from life to death and vice versa, as evidenced by the many alchemical symbols and emblems in both Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. The circle, whose center constitutes the principle of gnosis (knowledge, insight), acts as the dancers’ point of initiation, the primum mobile of a dance (and thus also social) collective that takes the viewer through various stages of life, energy states and psychic archetypes against the backdrop of Orff's continuous musical stimulus. 

An evolution of the life course – pointedly outlined by the forces of recoil and attraction – finds its reflection on stage through Clug's masterful expressive vocabulary. In creating new rituals of life (and gradually symbolically separating a couple as the new civilizational "primogenitors"), the choreographer allegorically underscores this evolution with a sung invocation of the texts from the famous medieval manuscript, thus creating all the conditions – through a synthesis of music, verbal and dance arts – for a deep and intense spiritual experience of life. 

Le Sacre du printemps

Choreographer: Edward Clug

Premiere: 13 April 2012

Modern (neoclassical) ballet co-produced with the Maribor 2012 - European Capital of Culture

The project Hommage à Stravinsky is an artistic tribute of Maribor Ballet to Igor Stravinsky, honoring the 130th anniversary of the composer's birth by reviving his work and making it aesthetically accessible to a wider audience. Additionally, the project will gain on its importance on the account of the centennial of the world premiere of Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), which was celebrated around the globe in the year 2013.

Edward Clug [ … ] has achieved the near impossible: a new and meaningful interpretation of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps.
Maggie Foyer, Dance Europe_________________________

Le Sacre du printemps

Music Igor Stravinski

A Note by author and choreographer Edward Clug:
"The Rite of Spring is undoubtedly a masterpiece of cult proportions of the 20th century. It does not just represent a turnabout within Stravinsky’s music poetics, but also in history of music. Furthermore, the entire evolution of the 20th century dance performativity reflects in The Rite, starting with Nijinsky’s staged choreography to Pina Bausch’s unique creativity. The original Nijinsky’s production represents an initiation of my own choreography, in respect of its hermeticism and "disturbing" avantgardism character at that time. My interpretation of The Rite could also be perceived as a personal tribute to Nijinsky and the infamous (lack of) "success" of the world premiere in Paris, which has indeed become a dynamic platform of development for modern dance in the 20th century.
This interpretation of The Rite follows the original libretto and music texture, which both depict a legend from pagan (pre-Christian) Russia. The legend conveys a story about ritual sacrifice of a (virgin) maiden, who has to dance to death, in order to restore fertility of the Earth, and regain the benevolence of the pagan spring deity. In the iconographic aspect, the performance employs the ethnographic symbols of the ancient Russian legend, i.e. women with long braid of hair and rosy cheeks, and men with full-grown beards – both being sex symbols, transposed into the contemporary world – in which everything is prepared for the new consecration of spring."

Cast

Set Design Marko Japelj
Costume Designer Leo Kulaš
Lighting Designer Tomaž Premzl
Assistant to Choreographer Matjaž Marin
Sound Technician Gregor Mendaš
Stage Manager Peter Krajnc

Tamás Darai was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied at the Hungarian Dance Academy (BA) and particip

ated in competitions in Lausanne, Istanbul and Beijing, and in summer intensives in North Carolina and Houston.

Tamás joined the Ballet of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb in 2012 under the direction of Irena Pasaric, where he became a first soloist. He left the company to join Ballett Augsburg in 2015.

He danced in choreographies by William Forsythe, Nacho Duato, Marco Goecke, Hans van Manen, Uwe Scholtz, Valentina Turcu and Cayetano Soto, among others, and worked on creations with Pascal

 Touzeau, Edward Clug, Dominique Dumais, Leo Mujic, Mauro de Candia, Ronald Savkovic and Riccardo De Nigris. His title roles were Franz in Coppelia, Prince in Nutcracker, Vronsky in Anna Karenina, Don Jose in Carmen, and Faust.

He joined the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in June 2017. There he worked and created with Jacopo Godani and learned his method of contemporary movement. Tamás danced in many of Godani’s pieces such as High Breed, Moto Perpetuo, Echoes from a Restless Soul, Metamorphers, Post Genoma and he was involved in the creation of Extinction of a Minor Species, Unit in Reaction, Al di La, From Now On, Ultimatum, Alter Ego, Stormo, Satelliting. He also did improvis

ation-based artistic installations with the company in Senckenberg Naturmuseum in Frankfurt, in the Frankfurter Kunstverein and in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. Tamás performed with the company in theaters such as Teatro Real in Madrid, Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow, Tel Aviv Opera and they performed in festivals in Montpellier, Reggio Emilia, Barcelona, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Kuopio, Winterthur and Ludwigsburg.

He performed in galas as a guest artist in Japan, Spain, Germany and Croatia.

Since 2020 he is a freelance artist. He started to teach workshops and give ballet classes, and in 2021 became a Master’s Degree student at the Hungarian Dance Academy.

Ukrainian-born ballet dancer Evgenija Koškina completed her ballet training at the State Ballet in Kiev, where she started at the Academic Youth Theatre. In 2002, she joined the ballet ensemble SNG Maribor, where she has danced many important roles to this day. She participated in several ballet competitions in Vienna, where she twice qualified for the finals, and won a gold plaque at the 8^th Competition of Young Slovenian Ballet Dancers in 2006 in Maribor. She has demonstrated her staggering technical and artistic qualities in solo ballet performances, both in the ballets of the classical ballet repertoire and in contemporary ballet choreographies. Her most prominent performances include solo roles from ballets such as Cinderella, La Bayadère, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote. She has also danced in contemporary ballet creations of the most prominent choreographers such as Alexander Ekman (Left Right Left Right), Jiří Kylián (Falling Angels), Johan Inger (Walking Mad), Mauro Bigonzetti (Cantata) and Edward Clug (Carmina Burana, Hill Harper's Dream, Stabat Mater, Tango, Architecture of Silence, Watching Others, Prêt-à-porter, Peer Gynt, The Rite of Spring, etc.).

Asami Nakashima was born in Osaka, Japan. She started training in her hometown at the age of six. In 2008 she came to the Vienna State Opera Ballet School where she graduated in 2010. She joined the Slovene National Theatre Maribor in 2011. Her repertoire includes the leading roles in ballets such as Kitri (Don Quixote), Medora and Gulnare (Le corsaire), Clara and Sugarplum (Nutcracker), Sylph (La Sylphide). In addition, she has danced works by Alexander Ekman, Jiří Kylián, Johan Inger, Mauro Bigonzetti, Edward Clug (Carmina Burana, Hill Harper’s Dream, Stabat Mater, Tango, Watching Others, Prêt-à-porter, Peer Gynt (Anitra, Solveig, Ingrid), The Rite Of Spring.)

She has received several honors and prizes including the bronze medal at the 27th Varna International Ballet Competition in 2016, gold medal at the Rudolf Nureyev International Ballet Competition in 2019 and a special prize awarded by the Slovene Ballet Artists Association in 2011 and in 2017.

She has performed at the galas in Japan, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia.