Petite Mort
Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Piano Concerto in A Major [Adagio], KV 488; Piano Concerto in C Major [Andante], KV 467)
Choreography
Jiří Kylián
Staging
Roslyn Anderson
Stefan Zeromski (2023)
Scenic Design
Jiří Kylián
Costume Design
Joke Visser
Lighting Design
Joop Caboort
Lighting Supervision
Kees Tjebbes
Duration
17 minutes
Premiere
August 23, 1991; Nederlands Dans Theater
PNB Premiere
November 5, 2009
The 2009 PNB premiere of Jiri Kylian’s Petite Mort was generously underwritten by Jeffrey & Susan Brotman and Peter & Peggy Horvitz.
Program Notes
Jiří Kylián choreographed Petite Mort for the Salzburg Festival in commemoration of the second centenary of Mozart’s death. He chose as his music the slow movements of two of Mozart’s most beautiful and popular piano concertos. The choreography includes twelve dancers and six fencing foils. The foils serve as dancing partners and sometimes turn out to be more stubborn and willful than a human partner. Besides light-hearted moments with the foils, Kylián also plays with black baroque dresses, which at times appear to exist separately from the dancers and at others to be molded to their bodies. Petite Mort was the first work by Jiri Kylián to be acquired by Pacific Northwest Ballet.