„When it comes to desire, the answer is Bolero”
According to a 20-year-old international music survey, Bolero’s soundscape is the best suited to boost our imagination. The implacably catching, clattering melody, heated by smoldering sexuality starts quietly then it is slowly taken over and being adapted by different wind instruments. In the middle spanish castanets turn up too so that the full orchestra continues to build up the tension until the „sudden death”. No emphatic closing chords, only hangs. An endless floating to be resumed at any time. The freezing bolero dancers with their arms raised above their heads symbolize both recoiling and the creature giving itself up in the fight – a woman in love, a man bound by his desires, a bull lead astray by the „liar” wearing a bolero, looking in the eye of its killer for the last time. Yes, bolero definitely has something to do with bullfighting.
The idea of the piece comes from dancer Ida Rubstein who commissioned Ravel 95 years ago and its first choreographer was a woman too, Bronislava Nijinska, younger sister of the famous Vaslav Nijinsky.
