“Dreams and cactuses” will unfold in the new hall of the Klaipėda State Musical Theater “Jūra”

Saturday, April 27, 6:30 p.m. In the big hall of the Klaipėda State Music Theater “Jūra” we will see the “Dreams and Cactuses” performance that brought the “Golden Cross of the Stage” to Yan Malaki, the best ballet artist of the country. The production, which attracts dance fans from the farthest corners of the country and abroad, was recognized as the best of 2023. performance in Klaipėda and won the “Mask of Thanks”. “Dreams and cactuses” will be the first repertory performance presented on the stage of the new theater!

The creators of the performance are young choreographers Robert Bondara (Poland) and Alexander Ekman (Sweden) from different countries, who have already received praise and prestigious awards from audiences and critics in various countries around the world due to their extraordinary creativity and desire to try their hand at ever-new dance scenes, genres and styles.

In the Klaipėda State Musical Theater’s dance performance “Dreams and cacti” alongside A. Ekman’s “Cacti” R. Bondara’s choreographic compositions “Hiccup” and “8m68” are presented, which encourage the audience to have their own opinion about stage art, not necessarily which coincides with the point of view of professionals. After all, “Cactuses” is the choreographer’s rebuttal to the “snobbish world of contemporary art” and the critics who write about it.

Dance miracle!

Ballet critic Skaidra Baranskaja says that it is rare to see so many people moving harmoniously but expressing themselves individually on stage. “Incredible performance of the Klaipėda Ballet troupe. With a light hand, A. Ekman threw the 27-minute masterpiece “Cacti” to the world, and he does not like it when someone from his bell tower tries to describe the phenomenon that is sweeping the world. I’m just happy that “Kaktusai” has sprouted in Lithuania as well,” she emphasizes.

“The main miracle of the choreographic works born in Klaipėda is the precise performance, which is admired for its freedom and the imagination of the choreographic drawing. The gathered dancers from different schools are trained so academically that the whole of the dance has become an easily spreading plastic force, allowing the danced plots to turn into a source of deeper reflection”, says theater expert Daiva Šabasevičienė.

According to theater critic, dance dramaturg Sigita Ivaškaitė, “Cactuses” can be about everything, about nothing and about whatever each of us wants, because their goal is to show the collision of creativity and reasoning about it on stage, thus highlighting the absurdity. “After all, without exception, we all experience art differently,” writes Sigita Ivaškaitė.

Cacti sprouted on stage

Surviving even the most adverse environmental conditions, cacti are found all over the world, from the arid glades of both Americas to the windowsills of our apartments. However, no one had seen them on the stage of the theater, and even more so in dance performances, until the 2010s, when Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman decided to decorate the stage with them in his performance, created for the II Troupe of the Netherlands Dance Theater, and even christened his new work “Cactuses”. Since then, “Cactuses” has become a globally recognized brand of A. Ekman’s work, which has marked the premieres of various troupes on the dance map more than twenty times, from Seattle in the northwest of the USA and São Paulo in the southeast of Brazil to Sydney in Australia and Wellington in New Zealand. Last spring, A. Ekman’s “Cactus” “bloomed” for the first time in Klaipėda as well.

In the 2010s, the choreographer, who was still just starting out, poked the audience wittily (as if with cactus thorns), urging them to think about modern dance as a form of “high art”, about the role of the critic and the pretentious rhetoric of critics. By parodying the extreme manifestations of this “high art”, A. Ekmans deconstructed with love and biting humor what seemed artificial or snobbish in the medium of modern dance, which he knew very well. In the performance, the dancers are placed on square platforms, as if imprisoned in white squares, and their joyful, rhythmic movement (the choreographer has mentioned that this image was inspired by seeing Tibetan monks performing a ritual like noisy yoga exercises) is accompanied by live music performed by a string quartet and ironic sounds emanating from the recording comments. The dancers frantically try to break out of their invisible prison, and in the end they each end up with a cactus. But what does it all mean?

We just wanted to have a laugh!

The choreographer gave his explanation: “This work is about how we perceive works of art, we feel the need to analyze and understand them. I am convinced that there is no one right way – each of us can interpret them and experience them as we like. “Cactuses” was born in that period of my life, when every essay about my work greatly upset my feelings and spoiled my mood. It seemed wrong to me that someone sits down, writes and, as it were, decides for everyone what one or another of my works is about. I stopped reading reviews and then responding to them, but I still have doubts about this man-made system.”

In this performance, A. Ekman created and rehearsed the choreography together with the musicians for the first time: “It was new for me. We created a rhythmic game in which the dancers rhythmically interact with the musicians of the string quartet – this became the score of the piece.” The Presto finale of Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor (known as Death and the Virgin) sets the tone and pace for this score. The performance also includes excerpts from the works of Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, rhythmic improvisation and texts spoken by a “behind the scenes voice”. It can be assumed that sometimes the critic’s voice can be heard among the dancers’ everyday remarks – he talks to himself, formulating phrases for his future review: “What do we see?”, “What is memorable here?”, “A skilled eye can see here…”, “abundant subtexts… too subtle to be recognized” etc. The choreographer says bluntly: “Those endless tauzals about art-shmane – that’s what it’s all about. We just wanted to make fun of those who think they are a little better than others.”

KVMT inf.

Martynas Aleksa’s photos