On 21 October the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra will celebrate the centenary of the Liepāja Ballet, and the culmination of the celebration will be collaboration with the greatest Latvian ballet dancer Elza Leimane and the musician Reinis Sējāns. Their joint work, i.e. the performance “The Crow. Flight in One Act” held at the Liepāja Concert Hall “Lielais dzintars” will surprise you with an unprecedented, symphonic scope.
“Dance in Liepāja has existed long before, but we can associate the year 1923 with the beginning of existence of the professional ballet company. Over time, ballet in Liepāja has developed a lot, and many of the best Latvian and foreign ballet dancers and choreographers have been here,” says Uldis Lipskis, director of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra.
“On 21 October we will celebrate the centenary of Liepāja professional ballet with a number of interesting events, the culmination of which will be the performance “The Crow. Flight in One Act”. An exhibition of ballet sketches by the artist Dace Dēliņa-Lipska will be held in the foyer of the second floor of the Concert Hall “Lielais dzintars”. Also, Orests Silabriedis will read a lecture on the history of ballet in Liepāja, during which illustrative ballet performances will be given by students from the Liepāja Ballet and Dance Studio led by Ingrīda Žizņevska, who has also trained soloists of the Latvian National Ballet,” says Uldis Lipskis.
The highlight event of the celebration will be the joint work “The Crow. Flight in One Act” by Reinis Sējāns and the Latvian National Ballet's leading soloist and choreographer Elza Leimane, which premiered in autumn 2016 in the New Hall of the Latvian National Opera.
“This time I will be accompanied by four soloists of the Latvian National Ballet on stage, because crows live in flocks. The presence and power of the orchestra will be felt, and the space itself is also extremely inspiring, since the Great Hall of the “Lielais dzintars” is not suitable for classical ballet, but when I think of the Crow, this place is really helping and challenging for me as well. There are things that need to be reworked, thought over,” says Elza Leimane, whose dance paths also lead to Liepāja: the premiere of her teacher Sarmīte Jakse's brightest role, “Giselle”, was held at the Liepāja Theatre. Back in the day she passed this role on to Elza Leimane, who received the Player’s Night award for it right on the stage of the Liepāja Theatre.
“Incarnating a crow, bringing it to life in movement and exploring the possibilities this image offers is a source of great creative joy and true inspiration for me. In “The Crow” I can juggle with the concepts of precision and freedom like nowhere else in my creative work. There are moments where I feel free to improvise, moments where I have to be precise and also moments where I just go with the flow. And Reinis (Sējāns) is the wind – there is no other place, where the wind is so loud, but in Liepāja!”.
“Crow. Flight in one act” is a story about a human – not a crow – about the inner struggle in human, about the ugly in the beautiful and the beautiful in the ugly, about approaching danger and getting to know yourself anew. The crow as a symbol, as an extremely intellectually developed and beautiful bird, helps to tell this story in a way that makes each of us see ourselves in it.
Tickets for the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra concerts can be purchased at “Biļešu paradīze” ticket offices.
The Concert is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, the State Cultural Capital Foundation and Liepāja City.
