Recent Choreography
Wolf’s Court
- NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Alexina Louie (commissioned score)
- Set and Costumes: Yannik Larivee
- Lighting: Christopher Dennis
- Premiere: June 2nd 2007, Toronto
- "Wolf’s Court was my first opportunity to choreograph to a commissioned orchestral score. For this 30 minute ballet, I worked with composer Alexina Louie and designers Yannik Larivee and Christopher Dennis to create a ballet that, as Penelope Reed Doob suggested, could have been subtitled, “A Fantasia on Empire". Yannik and I had wanted to use a floor cloth in a ballet for quite some time; putting a map on the floor, and having a huge cast of uniformly dressed dancers trample all over it, marking it with steel pins (as if plotting a battle) worked well with the theme of conquest and imperialism. Quite some time before the creation of the work, I’d read J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, and two characters in the book loosely inspired the final duet.”
Mrs. Black
- TORONTO DANCE THEATRE
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Lali Puna
- Costume: Matjash Mrozewski
- Lighting: Gabriel Cropley
- Premiere: May 24th 2007, Toronto
- “This solo was created for Alana Elmer to be part of TDT’s 12 Solos show. Alana wanted to dance something that was dark and little bit dramatic. I also found a way to use the Ikea tea lights that had been sitting in storage for too long.”
Lovers Speak
- WASHINGTON BALLET
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Henry Purcell
- Lighting: Joshua Michaels
- Premiere: May 1st 2007, Washington DC
- “Lovers Speak was part of a series of works inspired by Shakespeare for Washington Ballet’s 7x7: Shakespeare performances. Originally I planned to create a group piece set to a sound collage I created myself, using snippets of conversations I recorded with friends talking about the playwright. I realized I wouldn’t have enough time to pull the concept off, so at the last minute I decided to create a sensual duet to Purcell’s gorgeous music, loosely inspired by the idea of Romeo Juliet, just before parting in Act III.”
Concordia
- SAN FRANCISCO BALLET
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Matthew Hindson
- Costumes: Christopher Read
- Lighting: Christopher Dennis
- Premiere: April 11th 2007, San Francisco
- “As a young choreographer I sometimes feel torn between my classical background and pursuing a more contemporary aesthetic and approach in my work. I stumbled across Matthew Hindson’s great piece for strings, Rave and the Nightingale that echoes this tension, using a Schubert string quartet excerpt as a departure point. Christopher Read had the idea of dressing the dancers in abstracted variations of an 18th century hunting jacket for this energetic and movement-packed work.”
Planet Wonderful
- ROYAL DANISH BALLET
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: LazyB/Soren Nystrom Rasted (commissioned score)
- Set and Costumes: Morgan Large
- Lighting: Brad Fields
- Premiere: March 17th 2007, Copenhagen
- “Soren Rasted’s music for this ballet, taken from his album “Facts of Life” is filled with voices – reciting non-stop, random facts, ranting about the state of the world and the United States, people on the streets of New York talking about love…. It’s by turns cynical, hopeful, despairing and humorous. Designer Morgan Large and I thought it would be fun and appropriate to set the action around a TV in a drab apartment. It would also a bit of a challenge compositionally.”
Editrix
- Solo for Kate Franklin
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Valerie Calam/Vice Versa
- Costume: Lori Trez-Endes
- Lighting: Rebecca Picherak
- Premiere: January 10th 2007, Toronto
- “I’d worked with Kate a few times and we decided to really test her chops with this solo, drawing on her classical ballet background and her experience as a modern and contemporary dancer. Kate and I have also developed our own little system of choreographing together. Editrix refers to the process of creation for the solo: we made up endless material and then kept mixing and matching over the course of a year. Also Valerie Calam’s music is a quirky collage of bits of everything from classical, Musak-like ballroom, dancehall and hip hop music samples.”
C.V.
- NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Owen Belton
- Costumes: Matjash Mrozewski
- Lighting: Christopher Dennis
- Premiere: May 13th 2006, Toronto
- “Karen Kain asked me to create this work for a small group of National Ballet dancers who would perform the work in the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Opera House in London, in a series of performances celebrating the Royal Ballet’s 75th anniversary. I wanted to showcase some of the NBOCs amazing women and Christopher Body’s exceptional partnering skills. Composer Owen Belton and I worked loosely with the idea of the three Fates or Moirae, who spin, measure and cut the thread of a man’s life.”
Castle Nowhere
- ROYAL BALLET
- Choreography: Matjash Mrozewski
- Music: Arvo Pärt
- Costumes: Caroline O’Brien
- Set: Yannik Larivée
- Lighting: John B. Read
- Premiere: March 25th 2006, London
- “For a few years I’d been reading the novels of Henry James. When Monica Mason commissioned this work, and asked for a dramatic context to the ballet, I thought exploring his work and life would be a great departure point. Though there is no specific narrative to the work, I was inspired by James’ relationship with the author Constance Fenimore Cooper, as well as some of the triangular relationships that occurred in his life and writing.”
