Edward Clug & Milko Lazar team surprises again - "Four Reasons" Premieres in Portugal
On Wednesday, October 22, the Companhia Nacional de Bailado (the national ballet company of Portugal) gives the first performance of a ballet entitled Four Reasons. The choreography, scenery and lighting design of the production is by Romanian choreographer and dancer Edward Clug, director of the SNG Maribor Ballet in Slovenia, while the music is by Slovenian composer Milko Lazar and performed onstage by Lazar and violinist Jelena Ždrale.
Four Reasons is the latest product in the continuing collaboration between choreographer Clug and composer Lazar — both winners of the Prešeren Fund Prize, after having created together the successful ballet project Prêt-à-porter, a production which unified by their artistic spirit and styles. Their latest project is double-layered: dance and music are equal partners in the work, yet each exists individually or in compliment to the other. According to Milko Lazar, "the music stands by itself, and may also be performed separately as a concert work." Music as an independent unit is what motivates the choreographer and the two dancers towards a different perspective and attitude towards movement. The work becomes an equal relationship between the choreography and the musical content as well as between movement and musical work. In this context, the dancers are joined onstage by the musicians, who with their presence and interactive role supplement the artistic creation, completing the inner narrative arc of the production.
In the production, composer-pianist Milko Lazar and violinist Jelena Ždrale performed live interpretations of four two-movement "sonatas", which in the words of the composer complete the movement and choreography of the dancers with their basis in minimalism and repetitiveness, while at the same time allowing freedom of artistic creation. According to Lazar, it flirts with art pop, while still keeping its origins in classical form. Four pieces, Four Reasons, eight dancers — symbolism that the audience in Lisbon experienced on October 22.