Attending a Ballet Performance

Community Highlights Europe Attending a Ballet Performance

Andrzej Meżerycki Culture and Arts Center, along with Podlasie Concert Hall and the White Hall (“Sala Biala” in Polish) are well-known theater stages of Siedlce. We have visited each of them, and it’s hard to say which one is the best. The infrastructure of Andrzej Meżerycki Culture and Arts Center located in the Old City includes a theatre hall with 402 seats; a professional theatre stage with dimensions 11.60 x13.75 m equipped with all possible stage facilities and dressing rooms; modern lighting and sound technology.

You only have to follow the map of cultural events and festivals in the city. Sometimes the concerts are free. The usual ticket price is PLN 30 (less than $10). They charge less at Andrzej Meżerycki Culture and Arts Center: PLN 20 ($5), but it depends on how amazing the performing stars are. As pensioners, we had a PLN 4 discount.

One evening we found out about a concert of a junior group of the Polish National Ballet at the Culture and Art Center in Siedlce. Our local Polish Martha invited us to attend the performance, which was going to be an extraordinary event in the city cultural life. We have not attended a lot of ballet of late. What’s more, I do not even remember our last visit to the ballet, to say nothing of a junior ballet group performance. Therefore, we were excited, and in the afternoon we went to buy tickets beforehand. I used the opportunity of taking some pictures inside the lobby since it is never empty during a concert, and I did not bother anyone in the empty lobby.

The concert was called Juvenalia 3. The advertisement started with words “Presented to the residents of Siedlce”. The Polish National Ballet (PBN) from Warsaw presented the performance of eleven young dancers, the graduates of ballet schools. This project is called the PBN Junior project. It is supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The project is also called another dose of fresh energy for the Polish National Ballet in the 2024/25 season. The participants of the PBN Junior 2024/25 are Maja Augustyniak, Antonio Casti, Maciej Duda, Zuzanna Korytkowska, Kyle Lippoth, Antonino Modica, Aleksandra Pastuszka, Mikołaj Spiżewski, Kajetan Stabeusz, Jagoda Świderska, Łucja Ulbrych. We watched a short movie during the interval.

The PBN JUNIOR project is the initiative of Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet (PBN). It is an attempt to fill the gap that appears between the fruits of the work of ballet schools and the quantitative and qualitative expectations of the Polish theater stages. That is why a ten-person junior group was created at the ballet company of the Polish National Opera. The members of this group hone their technical and artistic skills in order to achieve the qualifications necessary for their possible regular work at the PBN or another Polish ballet company.

The selected juniors are mainly students of Polish ballet schools. They receive special pedagogical care from experienced PBN artists and get master classes in various dance techniques led by the invited foreign ballet masters. The young students participate in dedicated artistic programs on the National Ballet’s chamber stage. Then these artistic programs are presented successfully in other theaters in the country. As time goes by, they have the opportunity to join the PBN ensemble or apply for employment in other theaters. Dawid Trzensimiech, the National Ballet’s former first dancer, is the instructor and coordinator of the PBN Junior group. He is supported by PBN soloist Irina Wasilewska.

We watched four parts of the ballet performance. There was a 20-minute interval between each part. A short movie about the junior ballet group was the second interval. It was a presentation of the group coaches and its members.

Fantasie Polonaise/Polish Fantasy by Fryderyk Chopin / choreography by Dawid Trzensimiech

As the choreographer confessed, the music of Fryderyk Chopin had always inspired him. For Dawid Trzensimiech, it seemed obvious that he would create his first choreography to the work of the great Polish master. The amazing thing is that Chopin was only 19 years old when he composed the Piano Concerto in E minor, the same age as our juniors. Fantaisie Polonaise is a ballet-abstract strongly based on classical dance technique with neoclassical accents. Dawid Trzensimiech wanted the choreography to challenge the young and talented PNB Junior dancers, but at the same time give them more freedom of movement than the pure classical form.

“Dying Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns / choreography by Michail Fokin

Mikhail Fokin created this romantic choreographic miniature in 1905 especially for the legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova for a charity gala in St. Petersburg. It became her signature solo, with which she performed all over the world during her numerous tours. This ballet piece, just a few minutes long, is considered today the embodiment of the beauty of classical dance. It presents the dancer as a wounded swan painfully struggling with death. It has been performed many times. We watched this composition performed by Aleksandra Pastuszka, a young artist of PBN Junior.

“Shine" by Philip Glass, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki / choreography by Kristóf Szabó

According to the choreographer Kristóf Szabó, the main motif of his choreography is light or shine, which it can give and which we desire. The choreographer leaves the spectator a wide field of interpretation. They created a choreography based on organic mutual partnership of the whole group, acting tasks and work with props, demanding costumes and an unobvious rhythm.

“Journey within" by Juliusz Zarębski / choreography by Valentino Zucchetti

Valentino Zucchetti, the first soloist of the famous London Royal Ballet, developed his talent by regularly participating there in Draft Works - the choreographic workshops. He choreographed for the Royal Ballet, New English Ballet Theater and other European companies. On a special commission for PBN Junior, he created a choreography inspired by Polish music. The choice of the piece turned out to be completely unobvious, as he chose a composition by the unjustly forgotten Juliusz Zarębski, a 19th-century Polish chamber musician.

This featured blog entry was written by Vic_IV from the blog Our Stay in Poland.
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