Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, was ablaze with fluttering flags when I visited over the weekend of 15-16 June. Not only was the national flag on display just about everywhere, but that of Ukraine, too, as well as numerous Rainbow flags to mark Pride month. It is an indicator of just how much things have changed in the decade since my last visit, but it was also pleasing to observe that, despite the appearance of some interesting new buildings, such as the Studio Libeskind-designed MO Modern Art Museum, the lovely churches and cobbled streets of the Old Town remain the same. Vilnius, which looked wonderful in the brilliant summer sunshine, is also a remarkably verdant city, with trees and parkland just steps away from many of the main tourist sights.
The reason for my visit was to see the Lithuanian National Ballet’s new staging of Le Parc, a work originally choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1994 and since produced by a number of leading companies in Europe, including the Ballet of La Scala, Milan, and the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich. Although the 1970s Soviet era Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, with its severe yet attractive brick, wood and glass interiors, is as I remembered, the performance I attended demonstrated the changes instigated in recent years by the company’s artistic director, Lithuanian-born dancer and choreographer Martynas Rimeikis, who took up the post after the departure of Krzysztof Pastor in 2020.
Gone are many of the “Soviet” style productions previously performed by the company, and, in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the theatre has ceased performing operas and ballets with music by Russian composers. There are no Rites of Spring, Swan Lakes or The Nutcrackers planned for the foreseeable future. This has given the Lithuanian National Ballet an opportunity to revitalise its repertoire, and it has added new works, such as Marco Goecke’s La Strada, to the schedule and replaced the ubiquitous Tchaikovsky ballets with performances of productions of Le Corsaire and Harlequinade staged by Manuel Legris and Alexei Ratmansky respectively. Watching the company in Le Parc, one certainly gained the impression that the Lithuanian National Ballet had been reborn.
Le Parc is a stylish exploration of 18th century French ideals in the “art of love”, and Preljocaj has drawn upon Mme de la Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses and Mlle de Scudéry’s Carte du Tendre to form a ballet in which the literature “has already marked us by its sophisticated realisation of amorous love, which seems to want to escape the banalities of life.” In essence, the choreographer has created a series of acts of enticement played out by an aristocratic elite amidst the formal structures of a chateau garden – a recreation of love among the groves and geometric allés of a garden landscape by André Le Nôtre.
Preljocaj also investigates the parallels of love during the AIDS crisis, and asking, “What kinds of paths do feelings trace, what kind of itinerary is followed on a journey of the sentiments? If a capacity for resistance tends to fuel desire, it seems that a wish to check the course of passion – while shaping it to a particular end – ends by further exalting love.” The ballet, appropriately enough, is performed to music by Mozart, but interspersed with an electronic soundscape created by Christian Kass that is made up of wind, rustling leaves, birdsong, whispers and distant laughter.
Performed in three acts and played without an interval, Prelocaj employs a limited choreographic vocabulary in Le Parc but is masterful in evoking the sensuous world of the 18th century. The dancing is full of runs and jumps about the stage, coquetry, swoons, secret glances and hidden longings. At the start, a game of musical chairs is transformed into an attempt at seduction between a man, danced by Jonas Laucius, and a woman, Julija Stankevičiūtė. At first resistant to his advances, and conscious of etiquette and formal protocol, the woman gradually succumbs to him, and Le Parc concludes with a pas de deux in which the couple express their passion as the man spins her around and around the stage in a giddy whirl, her legs and torso arching backwards into the air in ecstasy. It’s as much about the fulfilment of sexual desire, a petite mort, as it is an expression of love. Both Laucius – tall, dark, handsome, almost saturnine – and Stankevičiūtė – small, fair and upright, yet sensual – perfectly caught the moods of their characters through fine, delineated, imaginative and compelling dancing.
Cunningly, Preljocaj also reminds us that the Ancien régime will come to an end through the introduction of a quartet of modern-day Gardeners (Lorenzo Epifani, Andrea Canei, Jonas Kertenis and Voicech Zuromskas – all marvellous). Clad in black and wearing dark glasses, the men dance throughout with mechanistic, almost robotic movements and gestures and, in one section, they lift and swoop Stankevičiūtė around the stage as if she were dreaming of love. It is these men who maintain the ornate gardens of the past for the pleasure and enjoyment of the general public of today and, tellingly, Le Parc ends with the sounds of happy children enjoying themselves in a playground.
Preljocaj’s achievement is enhanced considerably by Thierry Leproust’s marvellous set designs (architectural structures that suggest topiary or pollarded trees), and by Hervé Pierre’s exquisite costume designs, the finest recreations of 18th century fashion I have ever seen on stage. The performance was also graced by fine playing from the orchestra, conducted by Yannis Pousporikas, and by the excellent solo pianist Justas Čeponis .
This staging of Le Parc is a major achievement for the Lithuanian National Ballet, and I thought the ensemble dancers captured brilliantly the sophistication of Preljocaj’s concept. The ballet remains in repertoire in Vilnius until November, but if you can’t manage to see this production there are other interesting upcoming events during the company’s forthcoming 2024/2025 season.
Jonathan's trip was paid for by the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre
