Leda and the Swan from kimbrandstrup on Vimeo.
“I had a dream to go back to Kiev and capture my teachers’ souls on camera. Looking back, I can see the huge impact they had on helping me become the person and dancer that I am today. I wanted to put forward the people the audience doesn’t see; the faces I will never forget – my teachers. This is my way of saying thank you. Their passion for this art form made me fall in love, and choose ballet to be my passion in life.”
Alina Cojocaru
Zenaida Yanowsky and Tommy Franzen are the dancers in this mesmerising eight minute film, commissioned by The Royal Ballet for Deloitte Ignite 2014, which mingles Brandstrup’s lyrical choreography with Yeats’s poetry - read by actor Fiona Shaw - and Nico Muhly’s taut, urgent music for string quartet, to tell two opposing versions of the story of Leda and the Swan.
Kim Brandstrup choreographed, directed and edited the film, which The Daily Telegraph’s critic declared to have “the texture and heft of proper film-making”. Elsewhere, the film was described as “peerless” and “sexy, unsettling and unforgettable”.
Deloitte Ignite is the annual contemporary arts festival at the Royal Opera House. This year’s festival, curated by The Royal Ballet and The National Gallery’s Minna Moore Ede, explored the origins of creation, including the archetypal myth of Leda and the Swan, through dance, visual art, film, music and movement.