Persona
Ballet in 2 acts
Concept, Choreography and Direction: Robert Bondara
Music: Arvo Pärt, Paweł Szymański, Aldona Nawrocka
Set Design and Costume Design: Diana Marszałek, Julia Skrzynecka
Projections: Ewa Krasucka
Light Design: Maciej Igielski
Program Download.
World Premiere (during the 3rd Days of Dance):
18 September 2011 [Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera, Polish National Ballet, Warsaw, Poland]
Also presented:
28, 30 March 2013 [Dance Salad Festival, Houston, USA] – excerpt
29-30 June 2013 [27th International Competition for Choreographers in Hannover, Germany] - excerpt
28 September 2013 [Didura Festival, Sanok, Poland] - excerpt
23 October 2016 [International Dance Theatres Festival Open Stage, Tarnów, Poland]
„I escape with an ugly mug in my hands" - Gombrowicz had written. But here in Robert Bondara's ballet Persona the master openly advanced with it. The mug of Gombrowicz has an nicer name of course being associated with Jung and Bergman but the psychological domain from which the choreographer draws his inspiration doesn't leave any doubts. It seems that no one has progressed further on the Polish stage than Bondara in the art of grotesque dance at the same redefining Arvo Pärt's music (compositions by Paweł Szymański and Aldona Nawrocka are also used). Persona, the surface of the personality designed to be shown to others, multiplies here in fully bodily expressed grimaces, inflates in all kinds of incarnations and compromises itself in pathetic convulsions of the hurt ego. This ironic, astonishing and dynamic spectacle reveals the sphere of false appearances and dislocated ambitions in which all of us act among our fellow-men.
Jan Gondowicz
It is one of the most brilliant ballet careers of the last decade
It speaks of captive minds, but kept captive by ouerselves
There are no random movements here, no unnecessary gestures
Rzeczpospolita, Jacek Marczyński
It is as if somebody took out the soul of a human and changed it into sounds and vibrations. It is as if somebody got behind the curtain of thoughts and reached the core.
Rentgen duszy, Ewa Karabin
