World premieres of The Czech National Ballet on-line on YouTube

In the 2020/2021 season the Czech National Ballet succeeds in instigating creative energy and seeking new artistic impulses. The world online premiere of works by choreographers Douglas Lee and Alejandro Cerrudo ranks among them. The present brings along new things and approaches. The more so we appreciate every moment when we can freely create and thus contribute to the formation of a more friendly environment…

On March we will be showing works created by these choreographers in format of world premiere on-line on YouTube channel of The Czech National Ballet.

Thursday March 18th at 19.00: choreography PUPPET (Douglas Lee)
Record of the choreography on-line until March 24th 2021
Thursday March 25th at 19.00: choreography DOS SOLES SOLOS (Alejandro Cerrudo)
Record of the choreography on-line until March 31st 2021 

The English Douglas Lee and the Spanish Alejandro Cerrudo worked with the Czech National Ballet since August 2020. The dancers learned to exercise in face masks, disinfect their hands, split into small closed groups, take tests, protect themselves and others, watch their health and act as an evidence that the covid era shall not destroy the arts, the live theatre. In November 2020 both artists completed their new choreographies and the works were recorded. Both choreographies are part of the Phoenix production which has entered the repertory of the Czech National Ballet (the third part of the bill being Prelude und Liebestod by Cayetano Soto ), nevertheless the live premiere before the audience is still to come. 

Douglas Lee:
“My ballet is called Puppet. I love the use of plasticity in a dancer’s body and achieving beauty, nevertheless the idea of puppetry suggests an outside force moving the dancer’s limbs or an unusual non-human way of articulating the joints. Al this I am exploring in the studio. Mythical creatures such as a puppet bring a sense of fantasy out in a person’s creative mind. It is the same sense of fantasy that draws people to the theatre or ballet.”

Alejandro Cerrudo:
“Once I enter the studio I donʼt think about sun, death or rebirth. I just listen to the music and watch the dancers – and we make something new, in the present moment. As Chris McCandless says: The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

PUPPET
Choreography: Douglas Lee
Set design, costume design, lighting design: Douglas Lee
Technical adaptation of lighting design: Daniel Tesař
Ballet Master: Jiří Kodym
Music: Nicolas Sávva (Awakener, The Tower),  David Skidmore (Take Anything You Want, Triptan, Torched & Wrecked)
Music record: HAMU Percussion Ensemble (Awakener, The Tower), Third Coast Percussion (Take Anything You Want, Triptan, Torched & Wrecked)

DOS SOLES SOLOS
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo
Set design: Michael Korsch
Costumes: Karen Young
Light Design: Daniel Tesař
Ballet Master: Alexandre Katsapov 
Music: Caroline Shaw (Entr’acte , Plan & Elevation)
Music record: Attacca Quartet

photo: Serghei Gherciu, Martin Divíšek