COLOURS OF POLAND ACCORDING TO KAROL SZYMANOWSKI

Colours of Poland according to Karol Szymanowski is the latest spectacle created by the Cracovia Danza Court Ballet which premiered on June 21st, 2011 on the Duza Stage of the National Stary Theatre. Continuing the work undertaken with the peformance of 'Chopin's Dance World', with this new creation the Ballet aims to promote the figure and artistic output of the next eminent Polish artist. The performance is based on the composer's dance music and familiarizes the audience with the extraordinarily rich and varied Interwar Period as well as Karol Szymanowski's compositions of the first order. 'Colours of Poland' is a spectacle which presents various styles and forms of dance, including those of the many different cultures living in multicultural Poland of the 1st part of the 20th century. Combining the styles of the classical dance of the time and the emerging modern dance with elements of character dances, the artists - both the authors of the performance and the performers - transport the audience into Szymanowski's musical world. The performance was also conceived as a presentation of the composer's dance pieces as inscribed into the calendar of the changing seasons and accompanying folk rituals, among them Shrovetide, Midsummer's Day, or Redyk, the ceremonial practice whereby sheep are taken up to mountain pastures, kept there and brought back down. Each of these vignettes constitutes an artistic whole both in formal and aesthetic terms. The costumes and elements of the stage design allude to the aesthetics and fashion of the time as well as the artistic output of painter Zofia Stryjeńska.