Twenty years of Kylián’s Videotheque

In 1989, after the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the first minister of culture in the independent government Milan Lukeš travelled to the Netherlands to offer Jiří Kylián a job as an art director of ballet in the National Theatre in Prague. Kylián refused at that time, he also refused offers for the head of other prestigious European ballets – in Paris or Vienna.

However, he decided to help Czechoslovak dance in other way and he established a branch of his foundation in the Theatre Institute, Prague. During the first years, it focused on the exchange of dancers and dance teachers between Czechoslovakia – or the Czech Republic – and the Netherlands because Kylián saw the main problems of Czech dance in dance education and poor knowledge of Western repertoire. After a three-year intensive period, Kylián’s foundation in Prague focused on building up a unique archive of video-recordings of choreographies by Jiří Kylián and other leading world artists. The foundation changed its official name to Kylián’s videotheque and nowadays, it takes care of the collection of 2000 recordings.

The 20^th anniversary was the impulse for organization of a festive program with several lectures and workshops. The peak of celebrations was a gala show Different Shores and a launch of Jiří Kylián’s monograph on 30^th November.

The Different Shores evening was a truly original and unrepeatable program which originated in collaboration with Jiří Kylián and his Czech “students” – former dancers of the Dutch Dance Theatre Václav Kuneš and Nataša Novotná who founded the most progressive company of Czech contemporary dance 420PEOPLE. Teasers from Kylián’s works (Anonymous representing current Kylián’s focus on confrontation of live dance interpretation and film, a duet from 27´52´´, Bella Figura) were followed by works from his former dancers and colleagues: Cora Bos-Kroese staged duet Amoroso, Slovak Lukáš Timulák performed choreography Urtanz and Václav Kuneš introduced a premiere of his work Neonate. One of crucial dimensions of Kylián’s work is humour and this is why it was present during the whole gala evening: Sabine Kupferberg had a comic Czech speech where she played with the phrase “Kylián’s foundation/Kyliánova nadace” (she represented a personified woman called Nadace Kyliánová) and her words were interpreted into a “sign language” – gestures which originated as free associations to the text. Other comic sketches were caricatured quotes from excessively negative and excessively positive criticisms on Jiří Kylián’s work.

The launch of the book Different Shores, the first Czech monograph about Jiří Kylián, took place at the very end of the evening. The book with 301 pages is divided into three main parts. The first one chronologically follows Kylián’s work and the development in the Nederlands Dans Theater. The basic part is a translation of a text by Dutch dance critic Isabelle Lanz called A Garden of Dance which records Kylián’s work until 1995. The chapter by Dorota Gremlicová and Elvíra Němečková links to Lanz and follows Kylián’s work from 1995 to 2010. The first part of the book is concluded by Dorota Gremlicová’s chapter which deals with characteristic features of Kylián’s choreographic style and its changes in the 2000s. The second part of the book traces relations between Jiří Kylián and Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic. Elvíra Němečková described Kylián’s youth and his first dance attempts in Bohemia in the 1960s. Roman Vašek summarized penetration of Kylián’s works to Czechoslovakia during so-called normalization after 1968 and Kylián’s returns to the Czech Republic after 1989 (including Czech performances of Kylián’s works and Kylián’s influence on Czech choreographers.). The third part of the book is numerous lists (e.g. a list of recordings of Kylián’s choreographies in Kylián’s videotheque in Prague) and extensive annotated bibliography of articles. An important level of the book is numerous photographs which mediate atmosphere of Kylián’s dance world.

The book Different Shores is in Czech with an English summary and it is currently the most detailed monograph of Jiří Kylián which has ever originated.

Roman Vašek