The decision was made by the Polish minister of culture on a motion by Waldemar Dąbrowski, general manager of the Teatr Wielki. Simultaneously, Krzysztof Pastor took over as the director of the ballet company. This year sees the 10th anniversary of that milestone.
Over the course of the decade, the Polish National Ballet put on 37 new productions and revivals on both stages of the opera house, including full-length ballets and ballet programmes. They were 58 different pieces by 28 choreographers ranging from classical ballets, such as La Bayadère, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, or Sleeping Beauty, to 20th and 21st-century masterpieces by the likes of Mikhail Fokine, Vatslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Kurt Jooss, Frederick Ashton, John Cranko, Maurice Béjart, John Neumeier, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor and our own Conrad Drzewiecki. The PNB danced pieces devised by contemporary Polish choreographers, first and foremost Krzysztof Pastor but also Emil Wesołowski, Jacek Przybyłowicz, Robert Bondara, Jacek Tyski, Izadora Weiss, and Anna Hop, and to music written by Polish composers: Fryderyk Chopin, Stanisław Moniuszko, Mieczysław Karłowicz, Karol Szymanowski, Eugeniusz Morawski, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, and Paweł Szymański.
The company celebrates its anniversary on 25 April 2019 with a ballet gala featuring its leading artists and guests. The latter include the star of the Royal Ballet, London, Marianela Núñez together with the well-known Brazilian soloist Daniel Camargo, as well as leading soloists of the Dutch National Ballet: Maia Makhateli and Artur Shesterikov. As for the PNB, the audience will be treated to performances by the company's first soloists: Chinara Alizade and Vladimir Yaroshenko, Yuka Ebihara and Dawid Trzensimiech, Mai Kageyama and Patryk Walczak, Maria Żuk and Maksim Woitiul, as well as Paweł Koncewoj, and other members of the company performing the classical repertoire and Krzysztof Pastor's choreographies. (pch)
Pictured: Poster for the Gala designed by Adam Żebrowski
