At the final screening of the “Cinema and Ballet” program “Before the Curtain” this Sunday, November 20, at 16:00, premieres of five short films will take place in the new hall of the Latvian National Opera.
Directors Katrīna Neiburga, Ineta Sipunova, Juris Pakalniņš, Uģis Olte and Ivars Zviedris have created five short films dedicated to the centenary of the Latvian National Ballet, in which the visual landscapes show the splendor of ballet as well as everyday life, paying particular attention to the physical and psychological world of the artists.
The idea for director Katrina Neiburg’s short film “Shoulders Down, Hips Up” was born during a conversation with dancer Anna Lauder, who revealed to the director one summer evening in Michael Tower that when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t she was never satisfied with what she saw. It turns out that the profession of ballet makes you seriously question yourself and strongly criticize yourself for life, and in this age of body positivity, the body and ballet is a very interesting topic.
The short film by director Ineta Sipunova “Ballet. The law of energy and permanence” explains what happens when the viewer’s gaze meets the movement of the dancers in the scenic space. “Energy does not disappear or recreate itself, it just changes from one form of energy to another or moves from one body to another. The informational-emotional charge generated by the music and the content-emotional mood given to the performance is transferred to the viewer. The spectator also comes with his charge and an exchange takes place. It is a perpetual circle that keeps the viewer coming back again and again to encounter this exchange. And so for more than five hundred years in the world and now for a hundred years in Latvia”, this work is announced.
The film “Behind” by director Jura Pakalniņš tells what happens behind the scenes of “Swan Lake”, and “Behind the Curtain” by director Ivars Zviedras also has a similar theme. On the other hand, Uģa Olte’s “Aust” is created as a surreal and imaginative cinematic painting, staging the eternal cycle of alternating light and dark, using dancers from the Latvian National Ballet and choreography created by Elsa Leimane as protagonist means of expression.
The culmination of the centenary of the Latvian National Ballet will be on December 1, when a brilliant gala concert will take place on the Big Stage. An exhibition dedicated to the centenary of ballet can be visited at the Latvian Museum of Photography until November 27, while a book dedicated to the centenary of the Latvian National Ballet “A century or a moment?” will be published at the end of November.
