Jiří Kylián

Born in Prague, Jiří Kylián began his ballet training at the National Theatre of his home city and at the Prague Konservatorium. A scholarship awarded to him not only enabled him to go to the Royal Ballet School in London, but also brought him together with John Cranko, who engaged him to dance at the Stuttgarter Ballett and also encouraged him to become a choreographer. His first choreographic success was »Viewers« for the Nederlands Dans Theater in 1973. After two years as a guest choreographer Jiří Kylián became co-director of NDT before taking over the artistic direction of the ensemble in 1978. He scored two major successes in the same year with »Sinfonietta« at the Festival of Two Worlds in Charleston, South Carolina, and with »Symphony of Psalms« for NDT. Besides this he institutionalized an unusual ballet company structure employing three generations of dancers from seventeen to seventy as NDT 1, 2 and 3. Choreographers from all over the world came to work especially with the senior group before it had to be dissolved for financial reasons in 2006. With the »Black and White« choreographies which Jiří Kylián created in the mid 1980s his works took on a more abstract, surrealistic character; for all that still today as from the beginning they are typified by great enthusiasm for experiments and an openness for impulses from other cultures. These included anything from making acquaintance with Australian aborigine culture to Asiatic influence. He has produced more than a hundred works up to now for NDT and companies worldwide such as the Stuttgarter Ballett, the Ballet de l‘Opéra de Paris, the Munich Bayerisches Staatsballett, and the Tokyo Ballet.

In 2008 Queen Beatrix decorated him with the Orde van Oranje-Nassau, the highest royal honour in Holland – only one of the numberless distinctions which Jiří Kylián has attained in his career, of which the Honorary Award for Dance and Choreography of the Institut del Teatre of Barcelona in 1998, in the same year the Prix Benois de la Danse, and in 2000 the West End Theatre Award of the City of London and the Herald Arcangel Award are particularly of note. He received the honorary doctorate of the Juilliard School New York and the Honorary Medal from the President of the Czech Republic. In 2000 Jiří KyIián and NDT won three Nijinsky Prizes. In September 2017, Kylián was awarded with the prestigious Life Time Achievement Prize, the Positano Premia La Danza Léonide Massine Award. In March 2019 he was inaugurated as a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris.

After relinquishing his position as Artistic Director of the NDT Jiří KyIián continued to work with the company as Artistic Advisor (up to 2007) and as house choreographer (until 2009). 2006 saw the film »CAR-MEN« which he made on a Czech coalmine site in collaboration with Boris Paval Conen. In 2009 Kylián and Conen collaborated again at the Bavarian State Ballet with a production of »Zugvögel«.

At the Vienna State Opera, Kylián’s works already formed a focal point in the 1980s with performances of »Symphony in D«, »Wiegenlied«, »Rückkehr ins fremde Land«, »Dream Dances« and »Verklärte Nacht«. This was followed by »Petite Mort« and »Six Dances« in 2003, »Bella Figura« in 2011 and »Symphony of Psalms« in 2019.