BALLET OF SLOVENE NATIONAL THEATRE MARIBOR

PEER GYNT

A contemporary ballet in two acts
Libretto Edward Clug after the eponymous verse drama by Henrik Ibsen
Music Edvard Grieg
Choreography by Edward Clug
Performed by Denis Matvienko

in frames of the XV DANCE OPEN International Ballet Festival

April 23, 2016, 19:00. Alexandrinsky Theatre

Choreography: Edward Clug
Conductor: Simon Robinson
Piano solo: Maja Gombač
Costume designer: Leo Kulaš
Set designer: Marko Japelj
Sculptures: Ivo Nemec, Milena Greifoner
Assistant to choreographer: Matjaž Marin, Miloš Isailović

Starring
Peer Gynt: Denis Matvienko 
Solveig: Evgenija Koškina
Death: Gaj Žmavc
Åse, Peer's mother: Tanja Baronik
A deer: Sytze Jan Luske
Ingrid, the bride: Tijuana Križman Hudernik
Aslak, the blacksmith: Sergiu Moga
Woman in green: Tetiana Svetlična
Mads Moen, the groom: Matjaž Marin
Anitra, daughter of a Bedouin's chief: Asami Nakashima
Little Helga: Alena Medič
Begriffenfeldt, a doctor: Sergiu Moga
Four lunatics: Tetiana Svetlična, Mirjana Šrot, Matjaž Marin, Tiberiu Marta
Three dairymaids: Klavdija Stanišič, Blaga Stojčeva, Hristina Stojčeva
A troll chief: Vadim Kurgajev

The viewer has no other choice but enjoy a crystal clear dramaturgic surmise

Politika

I needed to get to the bottom line of every statement, to feel it, pass it through my mind and then through my body.

Edward Clug

Like it or not, but every epoch has its super heroes who are analyzed, redefined and explained by each subsequent generation. Oedipus, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust ... In the second half of the XIX century talented Henrik Ibsen created restless, seeking not just his way, but himself in his dreams and half-mystical reality Peer Gynt.

Edvard Grieg, while listening to Ibsen's poetry, created the most melodious and famous of his overtures. Today the Song of Solveig is much more famous than the poem that inspired her. There was other music and there were other performances, some of them in ballet. But even today, in one and a half century, the ambiguity of Peer Gynt, that is rooted either to folklore, or the unconscious, inspires many artists.

In 2015 Edward Clug, the choreographer of Slovene National Theatre Maribor, starts a dialogue with Ibsen and Grieg. It is not an easy dialogue as Clug is a man of a different epoch and different background…

But then, do his views really differ that much? Just like Peer Gynt, we all live on the joint of various mental epochs today. And many of us believe that they were born for great things – “one just needs to understand where to start from”.

And it is equally important today for all of us to make the choice between the commandment "be yourself" and the credo of the trolls "be pleased with yourself." But what if you do not find your place in life and the Button-molder will send your soul to the waste…

Cultural codes change, links break, threads get thinner, but… love still saves. And one still needs faithful Solveig…

Edward Clug’s choreography version of the Scandinavian folklore figure is integrated in the fabric of a modern ballet tale seasoned with the bold self- irony of the artist where the line between surrealism and the theatre of absurd is erased.

MediaSpeed

Edward Clug, who has aesthetically “elevated” the plot to a yet unseen level of complexity and coherence of all stage elements, as well as to an unsurpassable energetic performance

Vecer

It is a top-level performance, which deserves to be seen of many international stages

Delo

The absurd and self-irony are splashing out

Politika

Edward Clug about Peer Gynt ballet:

Peer Gynt is undoubtedly one of the most complex drama characters that has pointed out Ibsen as one of the leading playwrights of the 19th century. Grieg is, on the other hand, one of the key representatives of the subtle Nordic music idioms and romanticism in general.

As it is known, both artists entered a successful joint collaboration to stage Ibsen’s verse play Peer Gynt in Christiania (today’s Oslo) in 1876. For this occasion, Grieg wrote some of his incidental music, from which he later extrapolated some movements and rearranged them into two orchestral suites that are still very popular today.

During my research of Ibsen’s text and Grieg’s music, I have had to overcome a series of problems, in order to merge both of the worlds into a contemporary ballet novelty Peer Gynt. Ibsen’s verse drama inherently anticipates its own universality through hermetic depictions of the real world and Peer’s fantasy, while Grieg’s music, independently from Ibsen’s drama universe, evokes impressionist landscapes in its own right.

In other words, Ibsen and Grieg have both invented their own version of Peer Gynt. My aim was to resolve certain obstacles, i.e. limitations of both versions and their supposed incongruence, in order to invent my own interpretation. The ballet performance you are about to see, is in chronological sense closely linked to Ibsen’s narrative.

However, when creating a new libretto, I closely examined not just Grieg’s incidental music Peer Gynt, but also some of his most acknowledged concert, chamber and solo pieces, which are an integral part of my music selection. The main reason for such a decision was to stimulate a dynamic and coherent development of the ballet narrative.

Ibsen’s and Grieg’s artistic worlds are thus merged into a new whole, into a landscape with many doors. I have picked mine, which are widely open for you, dear viewers, and I invite you to step through them into a new ballet experience.

Edward Clug about work on the ballet:

In every new version the image of Peer Gynt gets some new meaning. I wanted to combine all the past versions in a kind of a dance union and present my vision of this character. It was difficult.

Some things are difficult to transfer in the language of dance. One brilliant phrase of Ibsen - and you understand everything, but the meaning that one puts into the movements and gestures is not so evident. I needed to get to the bottom line of every statement, to feel it, pass it through my mind and then through my body. It required a lot of effort, but at the same time I enjoyed this metamorphose tremendously.

It is the first time that I am working on the story with the plot that excites the director’s side of me. As the nature of dance is more abstract than of the drama theatre it requires more precision in every mise-en-scène, exact timing and fragmentation.