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Norwegian National Ballet’s Jiří Kylián Festival Celebrated a Master

June 23, 2025

Beloved Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián, now 78, has created over 100 ballets in his lifetime. An early innovator of contemporary ballet, his works can be both humorous and deeply emotional, with favorites like Petite Mort and Forgotten Land performed on company stages all over the world. Kylián, a former Stuttgart Ballet dancer who went on to lead Nederlands Dans Theater for over two decades, has recently stopped choreographing to focus on visual art and film.

From May 29–June 14, Norwegian National Ballet honored Kylián with a multifaceted festival called Wings of Time. The event, which Kylián helped curate, included two programs of his ballets, art installations, film screenings, and student performances on the opera house’s roof. “Such an extensive display of my work has never been presented before and will certainly never take place again,” Kylián wrote in the Wings of Time program notes.

An older man in a black jacket and pants leans the right side of his body against a mirrored window of a building outside. He lifts his left arm out to the side and looks towards the camera pleasantly. His reflection is shown in the mirror. Two seagulls fly in the sky above.
Jiří Kylián. Photo by OiOiOi, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

Norwegian National Ballet, which has 27 Kylián works in its repertoire, has long had a close relationship with the choreographer, starting in the 1980s. In fact, when the Oslo Opera House first opened in 2008, the company presented a program of his ballets for the inaugural main-stage performance. “I feel and I see the expertise, understanding, and love with which my works are reproduced and presented here,” Kylián wrote.

“To have the master himself in the studio, collaborating with us to bring his vision to life onstage, has been nothing short of an honor and a defining highlight of my career,” says Norwegian National Ballet dancer Andrew Coffey. “The festival has been an epic celebration of Jiří Kylián’s legacy and has managed to capture his profound impact on the dance world,”

Below are some photographic highlights from Wings of Time.

  • A male dancer in a sheer black top and black shorts jumps straight up, tucking his legs. A topless woman in a long red skirt stands next to him, moving her right arm in front of her chest and lifting her left arm up.
    Douwe Dekkers and Nae Nishimura in Bella Figura. Photo by Erik Berg, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.
  • A man lifts a woman in a black unitard as she opens her legs in second with both knees bent. She looks right, placing her right hand on her face, and holds her bent left arm out to the side. They dance in front of a black backdrop, and a bright spotlight and white tree branches hang down from the ceiling.
    Anaïs Touret and Dmytro Litvinov in Wings of Wax. Photo by Erik Berg, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

The first program, titled “Day Before Tomorrow,” presented three of Kylián’s major works: Bella Figura (1995), Wings of Wax (1997), and Gods and Dogs (2008). In his message to audience members, Kylián said he doesn’t create work that only dance experts will comprehend. “I always wanted people from all walks of life to be moved by my work,” he wrote. “Whatever I make has nothing to do with ‘understanding,’ but much more with ‘feeling,’ what life is about.”

  • A male and female dancer perform a contemporary pas de deux onstage. They wear beige shorts, and the woman also wears a matching corset. The man does a deep plié, turning in his right leg as the woman lays across his calf, her legs bent and feet in demi pointe. He looks down at ehr and extends his arms to the side.
    Artists of Norwegian National Ballet in Petit Mort. Photo by Jörg Wiesner, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.
  • Three male dancers in gray shirts and blue pants stand in a line and plié in second position, linking arms. Two women in blue leotards lean back over their arms, kicking their left legs up.
    From left: Marco Pagetti, Grete Sofie Borud Nybakken, Alex Cuadros, Anaïs Touret, and Ricardo Castellanos in Kylián’s No More Play. Photo by Jörg Wiesner, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

The second program, “Day After Yesterday,” offered four of his earlier works that feature full orchestras: Forgotten Land (1981), No More Play (1988), Petite Mort (1991), and Symphony of Psalms (1978). Many of the dancers who originated the ballets on both programs traveled to Oslo to help stage them, as did Kylián himself, an experience principal dancer Samantha Lynch calls “incredibly special.”

A woman in a long black dress with a red panel down the front does a low arabesque allongé, reachign her arms over her head and in front of her as she creates a ling line with her body. A male dancer stands behind her and bends down, resting his cheek on her back and stretching his arms along her body. They dance in front of a dark backdrop with gold and white lines.
Samantha Lynch and Jonathan Olofsson in Forgotten Land. Photo by Jörg Wiesner, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

“He has this ability to give meaning to every single movement, but also encourages and gives us the freedom to explore and bring ourselves into the piece,” says Lynch about working with Kylián in the studio.

A man and woman dance a pas de deux together on a darkened stage. They hold hands as danseur lunges to his right and the woman leans against his left side, doing a high devéloppé à la seconde. She wears a taupe, calf-length dress, while he wears dark pants and a gray long-sleeved shirt.
Andrew Coffey and Leyna Magbutay in Symphony of Psalms. Photo by Jörg Wiesner, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

Coffey adds: “While we were working together in the studio, he was adding new details and tweaking decades-old choreography, keeping the pieces fresh and alive.”

A bare-chested man in loose-fitting gray pants faces front and lunges down towards the floor, his arms extended to the side. To his right, a female dancer in a gray sleeveless shirt and shorts holds his right shoulder and forearm as she does a devéloppé à la seconde with her right leg. They dance in front of a shimmering curtain.
Lynch with Douwe Dekkers in Gods and Dogs. Photo by Erik Berg, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

“His pieces are about life, love, loss, and time,” says Lynch. “He speaks a lot about time, that the moment is now, and before you’ve realized it the moment has passed.”

  • A white sculpture of a nude dancer hangs upside down in an opera house lobby.
    A sculpture from Kylian’s art installation, Moving Still. Photo by Ilja Hendel, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.
  • A sculpture of a nude man from the waist up is installed outside on a window pane. Above it towards the top of the building, is a sculpture of pair of legs.
    Sculptures from Kylian’s art installation, Moving Still, lined the windows of the Oslo opera House. Photo by Ilja Hendel, courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

Wings of Time also reflects Kylián’s more recent move into visual art and film. The installation Moving Still features eight dancers—real people Kylián collaborated with throughout his choreographic career—whose bodies he had digitally scanned and made into sculptures. Each sculpture was cut in half, and positioned along the opera house’s glass façade, on half inside and the other half outside. “I’ve always been fascinated not only by movement and stillness but also by the question of whether we are inside or outside of a space,” Kylián wrote in the program notes.

An art installation showing a large black, unfinished circle, showing its brushstrokes, on a white floor and bathed in cool blue light. A rectangular shaped mirror is suspended above the center of it.
Ensō. Photo by Ilja Hendel, Courtesy Norwegian National Ballet.

In addition to an exhibition of Kylián’s photography, the festival featured the world premiere installation of Ensō, inspired by and named after the symbol sacred in Zen Buddhism. A large mirror rotates counterclockwise at its center. As Kylián wrote: “Every ensō is an imperfect circle, symbolizing one imperfect moment in the life of the person who created it.”

andrew coffey jiří kylián jiri kylian norwegian national ballet samantha lynch wings of time