The production, entitled A Body for Harnasie, which is set to be staged on Monday in Katowice, southern Poland, is a collaboration between the Katowice-based National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR) and British conductor Edward Gardner, choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Ben Cullen Williams.
The event is described by the organizers as “a reimagined concert production of Szymanowski’s ballet score Harnasie."
Harnasie by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is a folk story set in the Tatra mountains in the south of Poland. It depicts the abduction of a bride on her wedding day by Harnaś, the leader of a band of highland robbers.
The score of the ballet features elements borrowed and inspired by Polish highland music.
Premiered in Prague in 1935, Harnasie was produced in Paris a year later, and in Poland in 1938, a year after Szymanowski’s death.
The National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra writes on its website that, in A Body for Harnasie,“McGregor experiments with the fundamentals of dance, combining live dance with new photographic and film material of the Tatra mountains."
It says "the work has originated from an analogue live dance, featuring a trio for two males and a female referencing the original protagonists from Szymanowski’s work."
The "end result" is "a fusion of creative action created through artificial and human intelligence, blurring the boundaries of what is reality and what is artificial," according to the Polish Radio orchestra.
After its world premiere in Katowice, A Body for Harnasie will be performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London on March 6, with Gardner conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
(mk/gs)