Maria de Buenos Aires
Astor Piazzolla’s only opera is about the exciting history of the tango, in the original version.
Netherlands - Argentinean coproduction, performance in Spanish.
Astor Piazzolla’s ambitious work, in which almost all the elements of his compositions can be found. Its theme is a celebration of Maria, the personified tango, the spirit of Buenos Aires and also a protest against those who only want to exploit her for commercial purposes.
Piazzolla and his librettist, Horacio Ferrer draw on South African rhythms closely related to the tango and poems to tell the story. The main elements of the opera are the emotions and the rhythm.
El Duente, ‘the spirit’ awakens his love, Maria, from death. Maria is the soul of Buenos Aires, she personifies the tango. She embodies all the longings of those who came to the Argentine capital in the hope of becoming rich but who live a life without hope in the dark and dreary backyards. Maria understands and speaks the melancholy language of their sorrows and pain. She lives by night, for the Argentine heart only opens up at night when they dance the tango. Tango-Maria becomes a wild passion, a welcome guest in the dancehalls of the world, but her time suddenly runs out. A bullet from her accompanist, Bandoneon ends her life. Her soul descends to the underworld and only her formless body lives on for the sake of the tourists. She becomes a mere advertisement.
The ‘spirit’ cannot stand this any longer. He breathes new life into the empty body which, over the course of time will have descendants, and the tango, the real Tango lives, celebrating its golden age.

Arriaga Quartet & Tango
The string quartet was formed in 1980 by young artists graduating from the Brussels Royal Academy of Music and the Juilliard School, New York (members: Michael Guttman, Ivo Lintermans – violin, Jacques Dupriez – viola, Luc Tooten – cello). Their artistic ideal was shaped by the Belgian violin school and the interpretations of the Juilliard Quartet. The ensemble is named after Juan Chrisostomo de Arriga (1806–1826), known as the Spanish Mozart. Their repertoire is often composed of unusual pieces and works of rarely played composers. Their recordings of quartets by Arriaga, Milhaud, Meulemans, Westerlinck, and Vieuxtemps have been acclaimed by critics. They often perform modern music and they have been awarded the prize of Belgian composers (Prix Fuga) in recognition of their work. They have founded their own annual festival (Bruges) and are welcome guests at the big European festivals.

Compañía Nacional de Danza 2
The Spanish National Dance Company (Compañía Nacional de Danza - CND), like the Netherlands Dance Theatre, has set up its own youth company. CND 2 was formed in the autumn of 1999 at the initiative of Nacho Duato, the famous Spanish choreographer, who is also the artistic director of both CND and CND 2. CND 2 has set itself the aim of providing training for the young generation of dancers, acting as a bridge between ballet schools and conservatoires, and professional companies like CND. The director of the youth company – Duato and his assistant Tony Fabre, a former CND dancer – have built up a high standard repertoire, most of it Duato’s own creations but also including a number of works by promising young choreographers. This colourful variety combined with insistence on his standards gives the young artists an opportunity to become more closely acquainted with the latest trends in dance. CND 2, characterised by freshness and elegance, is an artistic undertaking which places great emphasis on the potential young dance audience of the future by offering novelties.

Nacho Duato
The artistic director of CND 2 was born in Valencia and began dance studies at the age of eighteen with the famous Rambert Dance Company in London. Later he refined his skills in Maurice Béjart’s Mudra School in Brussels, then with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre in New York. His first company was the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm which he joined in 1980. Two years later he joined the Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT) at the invitation of Jirí Kylián. In the early eighties he shifted his attention from dance to choreography: his first big recognition came in 1983 when his creation, Jardí Tancat won first prize at the Internationaler Choreographischer Wettbewerb (International Choreography Workshop). In 1988 Duato was appointed permanent choreographer of the NDT– together with Hans van Manen and Jirí Kylián. His creations have been added to the repertoires of the world’s leading dance companies and performed by such ensembles as the Cullberg Ballet, the Netherlands Dance Theatre, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Deutsche Oper Ballet of Berlin, Ballet Gulbenkian, San Francisco Ballet, the English Royal Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre. His works have won many prestigious prizes. Since 1990 Nacho Duato has been the artistic director of the Compañía Nacional de Danza, the leading dance ensemble in Spain.

Anželika Cholina, the choreographer of this performance based on the musical world of Astor Piazzolla, was born in Vilnius in 1970. She graduated from the Vilnius Ballet School in 1989, then continued her studies in the Moscow Theatre Academy, graduating in 1996 as a dancer-choreographer. She created her first works in the early 1990s, as a student of choreography in Moscow: these choreographic miniatures were followed in 1993 by her first full-length, one-act ballet, The Life of the Street, for students of the Vilnius Ballet School. In 1994 she created Bolero based on the music of Ravel, a choreography for the Lithuanian National Opera’s Ballet Ensemble. In the following years she produced a series of opera choreographies and continued her dance miniatures. In 1996 her first two-act ballet, Medea, was premiered. From that year she has also been working as a choreographer for fashion shows and then also for films.
In 1998 Cholina choreographed a contemporary dance performance titled Women’s Songs, drawing on the music and ideas of Marlene Dietrich’s songs, and in the same year she also produced a Carmen. In 1999 she choreographed a performance titled Coco in collaboration with the director O. Koršunovas – the piece was performed as the overture to the In Vogue International Fashion Festival held in Vilnius. In 2000 the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre staged her choreography of The House of Bernarda Alba. In the same year she made her debut in London’s Millennium Dome with the Tango in F now to be shown in Budapest; it was also performed one year later by the dancers of her own company, the Anželika Cholina Dance Theatre. In the past three years Cholina has been producing choreographies for her own company which she formed in December 2000. They regularly hold their premieres in the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. Last year the choreographer presented a dance drama titled Love and this year a Romeo and Juliet, both with her own company. The latter was her most ambitious work to date: the performance involves twenty-four artists – opera singers, actors and dancers.
Anželika Cholina is internationally recognised as the leading figure of Lithuanian dance. In the ten years of her career she has created five full-length dance dramas and around forty miniatures. Her basic aim in her energetic, expressive creations is to combine the tools of dance and drama to create a new quality of performing arts.
Anželika Cholina on the performance: “This is perhaps my emotionally richest performance. The process of its creation was extremely important and exciting for me. I encountered a great variety of roles and performers and I had to reveal them first of all to themselves. This piece demands raw emotions, which is why it sometimes happens that the performers wound each other psychologically on the stage – the performers therefore need to remind themselves again and again: this is only theatre … the drama melts away the borderline between theatre and reality.”

The programme titled Flamenco-Tango Fusion is the latest venture of flamenco dance star and choreographer Maria Serrano and her company. Knowing Serrano’s art there can be no doubt that it will win the approval of audiences who like high standard, authentic Latin dances and spectacular shows. We will witness the encounter and blending of two different music and dance styles; the aim of this fusion is to place them side by side in order to create a new and unusual, magic mix. The leading figures are two Argentinean dancers who, in despair at the situation in their country, decide to emigrate and seek their fortune in Spain, the birthplace of their ancestors who, centuries ago, began a new life in the New World. The tango artists go to Seville to find their roots and are touched by the spirit of flamenco: so begins the enchanting story of flamenco, love, passion and melancholy.
There are two dance pairs on the stage: Maria Serrano and José Galan as the flamenco dancers, while their Argentinean partners are naturally a tango dance pair. The two dance pairs present their own dance style in its pure, authentic form. But then suddenly there is a change of partners: with the encounter of the dancers the two trends “discover” each other, then begin to blend and merge. The dancers are accompanied by six tango and flamenco musicians: the flamenco guitar meets the bandoneon, the flamenco singer begins to sing the Argentinean tango. The two imposing styles combine in the Latin passion characteristic of them both.
Maria del Mar Serrano Rebollo, better known as Maria Serrano, was born in Seville. From early childhood on she was taught flamenco by Seville’s best and most famous flamenco teachers. Her talent was recognised by such figures as the grand lady of the genre Carmen Montoya and her daughter Carmelilla, José Galván, and Javier Barón. Because of her magnetic personality, the press often calls her the voodoo queen of flamenco. She gained world fame in the mid-nineties: she succeeded in winning the whole of Europe within a few years with her compositions. Die Welt called her simply ‘The queen of flamenco”. Serrano made her debut in Hungary at last year’s Budapest Spring Festival. Her enormously successful Ritmo programme, a show with a company of nineteen dancers accompanied by live music was also an exciting and magical blend of two seemingly remote styles: the passionate worlds of traditional Spanish and Cuban dance.

The programme titled Flamenco-Tango Fusion is the latest venture of flamenco dance star and choreographer Maria Serrano and her company. Knowing Serrano’s art there can be no doubt that it will win the approval of audiences who like high standard, authentic Latin dances and spectacular shows. We will witness the encounter and blending of two different music and dance styles; the aim of this fusion is to place them side by side in order to create a new and unusual, magic mix. The leading figures are two Argentinean dancers who, in despair at the situation in their country, decide to emigrate and seek their fortune in Spain, the birthplace of their ancestors who, centuries ago, began a new life in the New World. The tango artists go to Seville to find their roots and are touched by the spirit of flamenco: so begins the enchanting story of flamenco, love, passion and melancholy.
There are two dance pairs on the stage: Maria Serrano and José Galan as the flamenco dancers, while their Argentinean partners are naturally a tango dance pair. The two dance pairs present their own dance style in its pure, authentic form. But then suddenly there is a change of partners: with the encounter of the dancers the two trends “discover” each other, then begin to blend and merge. The dancers are accompanied by six tango and flamenco musicians: the flamenco guitar meets the bandoneon, the flamenco singer begins to sing the Argentinean tango. The two imposing styles combine in the Latin passion characteristic of them both.
Maria del Mar Serrano Rebollo, better known as Maria Serrano, was born in Seville. From early childhood on she was taught flamenco by Seville’s best and most famous flamenco teachers. Her talent was recognised by such figures as the grand lady of the genre Carmen Montoya and her daughter Carmelilla, José Galván, and Javier Barón. Because of her magnetic personality, the press often calls her the voodoo queen of flamenco. She gained world fame in the mid-nineties: she succeeded in winning the whole of Europe within a few years with her compositions. Die Welt called her simply ‘The queen of flamenco”. Serrano made her debut in Hungary at last year’s Budapest Spring Festival. Her enormously successful Ritmo programme, a show with a company of nineteen dancers accompanied by live music was also an exciting and magical blend of two seemingly remote styles: the passionate worlds of traditional Spanish and Cuban dance.

The ten-coloured Flower programme is a colourful cavalcade presenting the finest songs, music and solo dances of ten countries. These are the countries acceding to the European Union in 2004. The ten new member countries span a great geographical distance: from the Baltic, through our neighbours, to two small island countries at the edge of Europe, Cyprus and Malta.
Many previously little known music styles are found in this colourful palette. The audience can hear rare musical instruments, vocal solos and unusual choral works and admire brilliant solo dancing in this colourful programme.

Nederlands Dans Theater II
The young and dynamic dance ensemble
A Netherlands Dance Theatre II was formed in 1978. In the 25 years since then it has become a high standard, internationally recognised company and appeared in many theatres around the world: among others, in Spain, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Turkey, the United States, France, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands Antilles.
16 dancers (aged between 17 and 22 years) work in the NDT II, with the declared aim of providing a continuous supply of new dancers for the biggest company. All the members accepted have already completed classical training. Members are selected from among dancers graduating from the world’s renowned dance schools and conservatoires. At present seventy percent of the dancers in the NDT I came to the company from the NDT II.
The repertoire of NDT II includes works of a number of influential choreographers, such as. Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen, Ohad Naharin, Paul Lightfoot/Sol León and Johan Inger, but it is an important goal of the company to work with young, talented choreographers.
Over the past years the NDT II has become the most up-to-date company. By working with young choreographers and getting to know different choreographic styles and techniques, the young dancers have the opportunity to respond directly to contemporary trends in music and the arts. These talented young dancers are able to reflect the realities of our time and incorporate these elements in the new productions.

The first part of Eternal Ceremony, a two-part dance performance, is titled The Rites of Meeting and draws on the dances of different peoples to show the relations between man and woman. The choreographies are the work of choreographers of the Honvéd Dance Studio, and one of the special features of the production is that the Belgian husband and wife artist couple, the Flagels are also taking part in the work.
The Wedding Feast is a natural continuation of the different kinds of meeting and the choice of partner. This second part presents a stage version of the ritual, traditional wedding feast based on music and dances of the Zoboralja and Felvidék regions, mingled on the stage with the images arising in the thoughts of the bride.

Part 1: The Rites of Meeting
With the Hegedős Ensemble
Music: Claude Flagel, László Rossa
Editor-director: Ferenc Novák
Choreographers: Lou Flagel, Jolán Foltin, Orza Calin, Tibor Makovínyi

Part 2: The Wedding Feast
With Katalin Szvorák and the Hegedős Ensemble
Music: Ferenc Kiss
Choreographer-director: Jolán Foltin
Stage design: Edit Zeke
Costumes: Zsuzsa Imrik