Tiger Lily

The première of “Tiger Lily” was in 1994. I was asked to 
create a choreography, which should somehow commemorate 
and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of 
Piet Mondrian - one of the great artistic spirits of 
the 20th century (The “spiritual father” of the so called 
“Abstract geometric art”). 
Although Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan was born in Amersfoort, 
a small Dutch town, he became a highly influential, 
cosmopolitan figure. 
His work had an enormous influence on many artists of 
his generation, will certainly exercise much influence on 
many generations to come..!
He lived in Holland, France, England and New York. 
He influenced, and ultimately changed the way we look at art
- forever... 
In his young age he was an accomplished painter - he produced 
many paintings in a realistic style - including a charming 
water-colour entitled “Tiger Lily”.
Later in his life he has developed a new, analytical and 
intellectual way of painting, which forced his public to look 
at art in a very new, very different and confrontational way..! 
Just before the outset of World war I, he started to experiment 
with different styles which developed at that time. In 1911, 
he encountered the works of Picasso and Braque. 
This experience had a decisive influence on his way of thinking 
about art, and ultimately lead him to a new way of painting: 
abstraction... total abstraction without any visual reference 
to reality whatsoever... He called this new direction 
“neoplasticism”. 
Mondrian started to create images, which reduced the art of 
painting to just thick black vertical and horizontal lines,
leaving some spaces between them to be filled with grey or 
with one of the three primary colours: Red, Blue and Yellow... 
It was an intellectual construct. In his concept, Mondrian 
envisaged a certain kind of “universal beauty and harmony”. 
And he left it totally to the beholder to identify himself
with it or to dismiss it altogether...

I was asked to make a choreography based on Mondrian's work...
I felt, that I had to approach this challenge in a way, which 
would actually compliment Mondrian’s controversy, rather than 
simply going along with his unique discovery...
Looking closer at the anatomical mechanics, which enable our 
body to move, I came to a very simple and obvious conclusion: 
Our bodies are constructed as a system of “Joints” (or “Hinges”
as I like to call them).
These “Hinges” have only one way to create movement: they 
have to pivot around one point, creating always only a 
“circular movement”. If we want to make a straight line (like 
Mondrian did in many of his paintings), we must accomplish a
very complicated anatomic manoeuvre - imagine that you want 
to make a three meter long line on a wall - this might seem an 
easy task to you, but your body will be confronted with very 
many physical actions, and you will hardly be aware of many 
of them.

	
	
Your brain will have to calculate  endless circular movements 
of many joints of your body, in order to make this very simple 
“Straight Line”.
These simple facts have diverted my focus from the intellectual 
world to the world of physical movement, and emotionality... 
from straight lines to curves...
The result of our effort became an emotionally charged 
choreography with chaotic scenes, irrational behaviour, outbursts 
of uncontrolled emotions, but also some kind of longing for order 
and quiet...
Some sort of desire to belong to some structure we can believe 
in, to share something with someone, or at least be part of 
something, that might make our short life more worthwhile and 
more acceptable..!

I just want to mention one situation, which occurred in one of 
the rehearsals of “Tiger Lily”, because I feel that it has a 
certain significance for this work and maybe beyond...
There were two dancers in the studio (a man and a woman) 
together with me and my assistant. I asked the woman: “Could 
you stand in the middle of the room pretending to be a tree..?”
Then I asked the man: “Can you climb up on top of her like a
tree..?” He tried, and it was a very painful experience for her!
After he climbed down, she (clearly in pain) turned to me and 
said: “Jiri - is this really necessary..?”
This question was obviously very confronting and it made me feel 
very uneasy, but somehow, I must have felt the significance of 
the situation, and I answered: “No, this is not important at all, 
and in fact I think that it is quite negligible - and I also 
think that the choreography we created before, is not too 
significant either, and in fact I think that our own existence 
is certainly not indispensable..! This was a strangely revealing 
moment! This situation, which was not so easy to manage, actually 
gave me an unexpected feeling of freedom..! 
I have realised, that there are no ultimate criteria, rules,
regulations or criticisms to influence the way we wish to create, 
and that the realisation of the fact, that nothing is important, 
makes everything million times more important. Although we live 
now - everything we feel and do at this very moment of our life,
happens within a constantly shifting and moving point, separating 
our past from the future....
We are a constantly “moving target” always followed and marked 
by two lines - horizontal and vertical.
In my understanding, it is not the horizontal line - measuring 
our lifespan from birth to death, which is important…
It is the vertical line - measuring the depth of each moment 
we live and believe in and share with someone we love - this is 
the only value that counts

                    Jiří Kylián - The Hague, August 16, 2011