Sweet Dreams An apple is the traditional symbol of temptation and guilt, degrading the act of love to a sinful event. How dare anyone put such a deadly token into the cradle of a new born child. And yet it has become a cornerstone in the preaching of our nearly 2000 years of Christianity. And it is left to us to identify or to distance ourselves from this pre-conceived burden. “Sweet Dreams” takes an ironic look at the complex world of human sub consciousness. This world of secret dreams, aggressions and desires is realized in a work, which may be described as a choreographic collage of absurd aphoristic scenes. Yet these scenes are interconnected by their own inner logic, giving us the feeling that we stand beyond the point of our ability to influence them. They have a life and rules of their own. Six pieces for orchestra by Webern, which fall into the time span of great depression of the composer, caused by the death of his mother, is a work of overwhelming integrity and seriousness. And yet it is this time of the deepest tragedy, which sparks a flash of bizarre humor. These are the black clouds which create the wonder of lightning and make us realize how thin the wall between despair and laughter is. Under extreme conditions, these opposing worlds even seemidentical and make us wonder where the scale of sanity begins or ends.
This work with its music of contradicting statements, strange choreographic scenes, emotional grimace and visual distortion is inspired by the work of Franz Kafka whose world of mystery and ambiguity, his deadly humor and his constant questioning of our moral codes, has had a decisive influence on my spirituality and my (mis)understanding of the world. Jiří Kylián