Tremble

• Scenario, choreography and stage direction: Petr Zuska
• Music: Henryk Górecki, Jiří Pavlica
• Sets: Jan Dušek
• Costumes: Kateřina Štefková
• Light design: Kees Tjebbes
• Duration: 70 min.
• Number of dancers: 26
• World premiere: 10. 11. 2016 - National Theatre Brno Ballet
• Also in repertoire: Czech National Ballet (2017)

Inspired by Petr Holan’s poem The Last Leaf, Petr Zuska’s engrossing and introspective production points out the uncertainties of our lives. The world’s constancy is merely illusive, everything is in motion – people and nations, rivers shifting their courses, countries and borders, relations and contexts permanently changing. In his choreography, Petr Zuska put together a symbolic image of the tremulous world – with all its anonymous superficial identity – in contrast to the distressed outcry of every one of us: What about me? The production’s music too is based on contrast.  Nonetheless, just as there is no black without white and humans are formed by both reason and emotion – the intriguing juxtaposition between the music of Jiří Pavlica’s Hradišťan and Henryk Górecki’s symphony gives rise to pleasant harmony and chime of a well-functioning whole.

“The work reflects my not entirely good feeling about the current state of the world. I was creating it at the time it was convulsed by the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and numerous other burning problems, with omnipresent rising tensions. Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, dedicated to his wife, actually pays tribute to the millions of lives that were wasted between 1939 and 1945. Furthermore, the majority of the sacred and folk poetry resounding in the piece in the form of solo soprano speaks of the mother’s parting with her son, of eternal leaving and suffering. This dismal cycle is the alpha and omega of my scenic picture.

In the middle part, Jiří Pavlica’s music, combined with Vladimír Holan’s and Jan Skácel’s poetry, Old Slavonic texts, as well as echoes of remote cultures, brings about a different, wider and more positive aspect of existence

Foto: Pavel Hejný