A three-show program will mark Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet’s final premiere in the capital next week, with founder and artistic director Mariam Aleksidze bringing to the stage of the city’s Royal District Theater the first installment of the Bach Project series from the troop.
Conceived by Aleksidze and involving the score of the Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as electronic music by pioneering contemporary Georgian composer Nika Machaidze, Jhe Bach Project 1 will mark the launch of a series of “open structure” stagings involving contrasting themes, the company announced in preview.
The art 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 performance, the score of Bach’s suites will be performed live by Swiss-Italian cellist Mattia Zappa, member of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and former professor at the Lugano Conservatory. Known for Bach interpretations Six SuitesZappa also received a European Music Fellowship in 1997 for “artistic talent and outstanding achievement” with his rendition of Variations on a Rococo Theme by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Aleksidze, who previously produced a work on Bach’s music in 2019 – with The Goldberg variants presented on the big stage of the Shota Rustaveli State Theater in Tbilisi – told a Georgian public broadcasting program the Bach Project 1 marked the fulfillment of his idea of uniting the music of the classical composer with works by contemporary musical artists.
The choreographer also told the program’s hosts that the aim of her new series would be to seek “pure forms” in the staging work, in addition to reflecting a rapprochement of the “three main elements” of “physical, the emotional and the intellectual”, emphasized 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 series of productions inspired by historical figures, artists and philosophers and staged by the Tbilisi troupe over the recent seasons.
This work included last year’s production of Beatriceinspired by epic the divine comedy by the Italian philosopher and poet Dante Alighieri, as well as a livestream of a staging in the form of a pandemic Marijan’s roomcelebrating a Georgian poet from a century ago and debuting in 2020.
The Bach 1 Project will premiere at the Royal District Theatre, located at 10 Gia Abesadze Street in the capital, on October 18, 19 and 20.
