Biennale Dance
6th International Festival of Contemporary Dance
Jirí Kylián awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
Venice, 17 June 2008
The Prague-born Jirí Kylián, the creative spirit of the Nederlands Dans Theater, has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 6th International Festival of Contemporary Dance (14th - 29th June 2008).
The selection of Jirí Kylián, proposed by the Festival’s Director, Ismael Ivo, was approved by the Venice Biennale management. The awards ceremony for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was held at 7.30 p.m. on 17th June at the Teatro Malibran in Venice, during the course of the 6th Dance Festival.
In 2006, the award was attributed to Carolyn Carlson and in 2007 to Pina Bausch.
The motivation for the selection states: “Jirí Kylián has succeeded in imposing his unmistakable vision of contemporary ballet with the force of genius and grace. His works, classical in structure, modern in the mobility of the body, contemporary in taste, evolutional and highly personal in aesthetic form, imbued with the most intimate and moving musicality, are examples of pure beauty and intelligence of the body, instants of marvel resulting from an intimate understanding of man as a whole, flesh, mind and spirit. A humanist without limits, Kylián has placed his creativity at the service of communication between peoples, from his home, Prague, to Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and rest of the world, with the acumen of a positive, well-meaning talent, which is no stranger to all that lives on this earth”.
With the company and the theatre to which he indissolubly linked his name, the Nederlands Dans Theater, Kylián created Sinfonietta (1978), a spectacle that spread his name around the world. Sinfonietta was followed by many other successes destined to modify the development of choreography of the past 30 years, and which have joined the repertoire of leading ballet companies: Petite Mort (1991), Bella Figura (1995), Wings of Wax (1997), Arcimboldo 2000, and 27’52”. For the “Solo Donna” series of 1999 at the Venice Biennale, Kylián created Silent Cries, a solo made to measure for the interpretative skills of his wife, Sabine Kupferberg. It proved an illuminating example of the art of this creator who, from an absolute masterpiece of modern dance – Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un faune – has succeeded in drawing a new masterpiece.
“I believe that we need positive forces; we need beauty today more than ever…” declared Kylián concerning a theme that lies at the heart of this year’s 6th International Festival of Contemporary Dance. “Certainly I believe in universal beauty, and I seek it continuously in every person, in every dancer, because each of us bears that flame, that colour, that splendour, which represents universal beauty, within our breast. I believe it is my clear duty to identify that beauty, that positivity. But it should be clear that I do not regard this concept in terms of the ‘classical’ Greek ideal, but rather in terms of the ‘Hellenistic’ one, whereby beauty is not canonical perfection but is to be found in sometimes twisted and apparently disharmonious things, which are then transformed into emotions in those observing them…” (from an interview with Elisa Vaccarino).
The award for lifetime achievement, which sees the Performing Arts sections adopting an illustrious tradition at the Venice Biennale, also affirms the importance and prestige of the discipline of Dance – introduced into the Biennale’s history with the 1998 reform – and which has in a few years progressively established and consolidated itself, becoming a national and international point of reference with its own Festival.
