TRILOGY
TRILOGY • Featured Dance
Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre’s signature work - TRILOGY (2013) - is an evening-length production (75 mins for 8 dancers) with the music of the acclaimed contemporary composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. Inspired by the story of Ulysses and Penelope, TRILOGY is comprised of Transparent Walls, Logbook, and Portals, and explores the idea of human perseverance in the quest for love and reunion. Striking architectural elements define and divide the space, contrasting and balancing the human drama within.
Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre’s signature work - TRILOGY (2013) - is an evening-length production (75 mins for 8 dancers) with the music of the acclaimed contemporary composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. Inspired by the story of Ulysses and Penelope, TRILOGY is comprised of Transparent Walls, Logbook, and Portals, and explores the idea of human perseverance in the quest for love and reunion. Striking architectural elements define and divide the space, contrasting and balancing the human drama within.
Trilogy excerpts from Dusan Tynek on Vimeo.
Transparent Walls examines organized chaos – where individuals break free from modern life’s tumultuous machinery to find moments of connectedness and humanity while a dark void looms menacingly at the back of the stage. Passages uses lighting to fracture and shift the stage to evoke a tumultuous sea journey and arrival to an unknown land. In the dramatic and primal finale - Portals - the stage splits in two and addresses identity that transcends boundaries. TRILOGY focuses a spotlight on the forces that act upon individuals and events - revealing secret realms and questioning equilibrium in an ever-changing world. The eight performers inhabit and migrate between spaces, portraying the sense of loss and gain for both the individual and the collective. This questions how an individual struggles with displacement to find his/her own path within two worlds existing on the same plane. Abiding by distinct and varying laws of physicality, one world becomes visible and the other obscured, one fast moving and the other languid, one dominant and the other yielding, one sparse and the other crowded. Both environments and inhabitants exist in no particular time and space, but tension arises as time flows and ebbs differently in each space.
Transparent Walls excerpt from Dusan Tynek on Vimeo.
The conflicting sense of one’s belonging to a specific space or time is examined as well. The inhabitants of the two worlds are on a quest to explore the unknown and unfamiliar. While generating contrasts and extremes – highly supercharged bursts of energy and a slow butoh-like suspension of time - the performers’ animation and abeyance engender either order or chaos. When an individual or a couple migrate to a new space, they find themselves disrupting its presumed equilibrium and discovering the essence of being human.
As a choreographer gifted with the ability to communicate complex emotional states through dance, Týnek infuses his innovative movement style with precision, nuance and poetic imagination. The force and cadence of Ms. Vrebalov’s compositions create a daring musical counterpoint to the vigorous and vivid choreography.
TRILOGY was made possible through the generous support of The National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Passages was developed in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, and premiered at the Serbian National Theatre (Novi Sad, Serbia) in 2013. TRILOGY may be performed either to recorded music or live by the dynamic string quartet ETHEL.
“Mr. Týnek showed a remarkable capacity for creating tightly structured dance worlds, inhabited by ingenious, surprising movement invention. His vocabulary is loosely balletic but devoid of any stretched emphasis or weightless elevation. In the opening “Transparent Walls,” the eight dancers surge from darkness at the back of the stage. To a moody recorded score for amplified cello and wind instruments, by Aleksandra Vrebalov, they move rapidly across
and off the stage, quickly jumping and turning, scattering a central couple leaning in toward each other in deep arabesques. That couple keeps re-forming amid the wind-blown dancing: one of Mr. Týnek’s strengths is his ability to pluck sudden formations ... from the swirling activity and imprint them upon the eye … Mr. Týnek is an undoubted talent, a choreographer who seems fascinated by movement itself and the strange, subtle ways in which it communicates strange, subtle things. If that makes him a rarity right now, he probably doesn’t care. The dance — and dancing — is the thing.” - The New York Times
As a choreographer gifted with the ability to communicate complex emotional states through dance, Týnek infuses his innovative movement style with precision, nuance and poetic imagination. The force and cadence of Ms. Vrebalov’s compositions create a daring musical counterpoint to the vigorous and vivid choreography.
TRILOGY was made possible through the generous support of The National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Passages was developed in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, and premiered at the Serbian National Theatre (Novi Sad, Serbia) in 2013. TRILOGY may be performed either to recorded music or live by the dynamic string quartet ETHEL.
“Mr. Týnek showed a remarkable capacity for creating tightly structured dance worlds, inhabited by ingenious, surprising movement invention. His vocabulary is loosely balletic but devoid of any stretched emphasis or weightless elevation. In the opening “Transparent Walls,” the eight dancers surge from darkness at the back of the stage. To a moody recorded score for amplified cello and wind instruments, by Aleksandra Vrebalov, they move rapidly across
and off the stage, quickly jumping and turning, scattering a central couple leaning in toward each other in deep arabesques. That couple keeps re-forming amid the wind-blown dancing: one of Mr. Týnek’s strengths is his ability to pluck sudden formations ... from the swirling activity and imprint them upon the eye … Mr. Týnek is an undoubted talent, a choreographer who seems fascinated by movement itself and the strange, subtle ways in which it communicates strange, subtle things. If that makes him a rarity right now, he probably doesn’t care. The dance — and dancing — is the thing.” - The New York Times
