SUMMARY

Founded in 1979 and well known in both Hungary and abroad, the Ballet Company of Győr was named Müpa Budapest’s Ensemble of the Season in 2021/2022. Their dance show Movements to Stravinsky / Mimi was premiered in Autumn 2021.

András Lukács created his choreography Movements to Stravinsky in 2017, under a commission from the Wiener Staatsballett. This neoclassical ballet set to a selection from the Russian composer’s output (Pulcinella, Apollon Musagète and Les cinq doigts) works with a streamlined, nearly minimalist world. For the choreographer, the world of the Renaissance and the commedia dell’arte served merely as a starting point. “I saw enormous round collars on the dancers, who would perform in a completely empty space allowing viewers to concentrate all of their attention on them. My aim was for the choreography and the music to take shape together and create a single image. To elevate the movement to the level of the music, if you like.

Movements to Stravinsky is a plotless ballet: watching a dancer’s beautiful movements on an empty stage is an uplifting experience in its own right.”

Narrative ballets have always been the key part of the carier of the ensemble’s director, László Velekei. “I’m not afraid to work through the entire story, although naturally always filtering it through my own creative outlook, trusting that I will see it slightly differently and present the familiar narrative differently.”

In Mimi, the choreographer situates the story in the grim and barren world of an abandoned metro underpass, where youths bent on instant gratification and the ecstasy of narcotics speak of the Mandarin’s sacrifice. “The entire performance will be a single brutal and surreal journey: we feel confident that the audience will be captivated by the multiple layers of magic on the stage. The metro station changes and transforms, constantly challenging our sense of space and vision. We also approached the murders and the lovemaking scenes in a different fashion from the usual one, thereby also moving in a direction that takes us beyond reality.”

The two choreographers believe that the two very different worlds on the stage nevertheless complement each other well. Viewers will first marvel at the beauty of dance itself before allowing themselves to be gripped by a precisely related and unsettling story.