Trouw: “Retrospective shows how influential Jiří Kylián’s dance still is”
21 June 2025
The Norwegian National Ballet recently performed Wings of Time in The Hague — a beautiful retrospective of choreographer Jiří Kylián’s work. According to critic Alexander Hiskemuller from Trouw, the performance still clearly demonstrates how rich and influential Kylián’s body of work remains.
The Wings of Time program guided the audience through highlights from Kylián’s prolific career between 1978 and 1991, showcasing the evolution of his style and recurring themes. Symphony of Psalms, for instance, is deeply moving, featuring dancers who, as Trouw aptly puts it, “move like flesh-and-blood human beings.” The choreography is “clearly structured, with deep emotional resonance, poetic without a trace of pathos.” That same balance of strength and vulnerability returns in Forgotten Land, where dancers appear to be “reaching for something that once was — or perhaps never truly existed.” In No More Play, the performers move across the stage “as if trying to hold on to something that is already slipping away,” lending the piece a nearly tangible melancholy. And then there is Petite Mort, in which Kylián plays with themes of sex, power, and beauty — all with a touch of irony and expressed through restrained, charged movement.
According to the review, the Norwegian interpretation is quiet and precise, which in turn reveals a “nearly meditative” layer in the work. Kylián, the Czech-born choreographer, is known for blending classical technique with modern dance, addressing universal themes. He pulled dance “away from the elitist and exalted,” bringing it instead “closer to the human experience.” In short, Wings of Time proves that Kylián’s legacy is very much alive: his works remain “timeless,” and his influence “unabatedly powerful.”