“‘A Body for Harnasie’ turns a little-known 20th-century ballet into a multimedia fantasia for today.
In 1936, Serge Lifar took to the stage of the Paris Opera, costumed to kill. Nijinsky’s heir twirled a pistol in each hand, black curls tumbling from a towering hat, a painted bodice of geometric shapes barely reaching his nipples. The role requiring such provocation was that of a robber in a pantomime-ballet called Harnasie, a folkloric work by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski that had taken him eight years to write and a further four to premiere in Prague.
Harnasie, though a beautifully layered score influenced by the stirring goral music of the Tatra mountains and the tonal experimentation of Stravinsky, isn’t a work that’s troubled the schedules a great deal since, and Szymanowski’s name is not known well outside his native Poland. But on Monday night, a new version of Harnasie — now called A Body for Harnasie — was brought to the stage in Katowice, Poland, by 53-year-old British choreographer Wayne McGregor, with music and chorus provided by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR).“