Symphony No. 1 in D major

• Choreography and set: Petr Zuska
• Music: Gustav Mahler
• Costumes: Roman Šolc
• Light design: Petr Zuska, Pavel Kremlík
• Duration: 20 min.
• Number of dancers: 18
• World premiere: 17. 5. 2010 - Expo 2010 Shanghai (Czech National Ballet)
• Czech premiere: 11. 11. 2010 - Czech National Ballet

The choreography is a clear visualisation of Gustav Mahler’s music, his celebrated Symphony No. 1 in D major (part of the first and the whole second and third movements), ingeniously built, using the neoclassical dance phraseology. Mahler’s symphony is characterised by monumentality, purity and profundity, coupled with distinct emotional expression, which are also boldly reflected in Petr Zuska’s work. His choreography is not declarative, nor does it contain rhetorical impassion, with the style being highly austere, featuring great stringency in relation to the human body as the material.

The choreography is distinguished by ceaseless fluidity of the moving dancers, a continuous, endless current of bodies, which are always borne by music in the same direction. The constant tide of the moving bodies glides across the stage to the strains of Mahler’s dramatic music.

Foto: Pavel Hejný, Roman Sejkot, Anna Rasmussen