Choreography Jiři Kylián
Dance performance The Nederlands Dans Theater

Claude Debussy's Prélude No. 10 "La Cathédrale engloutie", first performed in Paris in 1910, is based on the ancient Breton legend of the submerged cathedral of the village of Ys. When Kylián chose this music in 1975 for his choreography, he reduced the legend to its core message in order to represent the eternal conflict seething inside the human soul that comes about from self-imposed laws and the temptation or obligation to break them.

Credits

Chorégraphie Jiři Kylián compagnie Nederlands Danse Theater danseurs Jeanne Solan, Karen Tims, Nils Christe, Eric McCullough
Musique "La cathédrale engloutie" de Claude Debussy
Piano Nico de Rooy
Décors et costumes Jiři Kylián
Réalisateur Hans Hulscher assistant à la réalisation Jellie Dekker

Production NOS production en association avec RM ARTS

1983

DVD AVAILABLE AT ARTHAUS MUSIK : www.arthaus-musik.com

Updating : may 2012

The world-renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián (Czechoslovakia, 1947) has been artistic director and house choreographer for of Nederlands Dans Theater for more than thirty years. Throughout his career Kylián created 75 choreographies for NDT. The piece  "Mémoires d’Oubliettes" marked the end of his work for NDT in 2009. Since then his creative focus has shifted to more small scale projects. Kylián created various other pieces for companies worldwide such as the Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opéra, the Munich Bayerisches Staatsballett and the Tokyo Ballet. Kylián received many prestigious, international awards and honours.

Jiří Kylián started his dance career at the age of nine, at the School of the National Ballet in Prague. In 1962 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Conservatory. He left Prague in 1967 when he received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in London.  Then he left for the Stuttgart Ballet led by John Cranko, where he made his debut as a choreographer with Paradox for the Noverre Gesellschaft. After having created three ballets for NDT ("Viewers", "Stoolgame" and "La Cathédrale Engloutie"), he became the company’s artistic director in 1975 together with Hans Knill. During the 1978 Charleston Festival in the United States  Kylián put NDT on the international map with Sinfonietta (Leoš Janácek). That year he and Carel Birnie founded NDT 2, which was – and is – meant to offer young dancers the opportunity to develop their skills and talents. In 1991 he initiated NDT 3; a company that created opportunities for ‘older’ dancers. NDT stood out as the first company worldwide that showed the three dimensions of a dancer´s life. After an extraordinary record of service Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained associated to the dance company as house choreographer until 2009.

Source: Nederlands Dance Theater 's website

More information: ndt.nl/en/home.html