Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet readying Bach Project premiere to launch series at Royal District Theatre
Troupe founder and artistic director Mariam Aleksidze (in foreground) conceived the new series as a coming together of works by Bach, productions by contemporary music artists, and choreographic language. Photo: Tina Kazakhishvili/Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet.
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A three-show bill will mark the latest premiere of Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet in the capital next week, with founder and artistic director Mariam Aleksidze bringing to the stage of the city's Royal District Theatre the first instalment in the Bach Project series of the troupe.
Conceived by Aleksidze and involving the score of the Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, along with electronic music by pioneering contemporary Georgian composer Nika Machaidze, The Bach Project 1 will mark the launch of a series of stagings with "open structure" and involving contrasting themes, a preview from the company said.
The artistic director described the idea as bringing together "forms created on themes" featuring contrasts between "physical and spiritual, human and machine, knowledge and information" and more.
In the first show, the score of the Bach suites will be performed live by Swiss-Italian cellist Mattia Zappa, member of Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich and former professor at the Conservatory in Lugano. Known for performances of Bach's Six Suites, Zappa also received a European music fellowship in 1997 for "artistic talent and outstanding accomplishment" with his interpretation of Variations on a Rococo Theme by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Aleksidze, who previously produced a work involving music by Bach in 2019 - with The Goldberg Variations presented on the Grand Stage of Shota Rustaveli State Theatre in Tbilisi - told a Georgian Public Broadcaster programme The Bach Project 1 marked a fulfilment of her idea of bringing together the classical composer's music with works by contemporary musical artists.
The choreographer also told programme hosts the focus of her new series would be to seek "clean forms" in staging work, in addition to reflecting a coming together of the "three principal elements" of "the physical, the emotional and the intellectual", as highlighted in the music of the German composer and used in contemporary dance.
While marking the start of a new project, the new premiere is also a continuation of a string of productions inspired by historical figures, artists and philosophers and staged at the Tbilisi troupe over the recent seasons.
These works included last year's production of Beatrice, as inspired by the epic The Divine Comedy by Italian philosopher and poet Dante Alighieri, as well as a livestream of a pandemic-shaped staging Marijan's Room, celebrating a Georgian woman poet from a century ago and debuting in 2020.
The Bach Project 1 will be premiered at the Royal District Theatre, located at 10, Gia Abesadze Street in the capital, on February 18, 19 and 20.
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