The National Theatre Brno Ballet opens the new season today with the première of the ballet Kafka. In dance form, it will pay tribute to the literary genius whose centenary of death we marked last year. Kafkaesque themes are still relevant in modern society, as evidenced by the fact that artists constantly return to them. Choreographer Markéta Pimek Habalová, also the creator of the popular Cinderella, is crafting a contemporary ballet for NdB.
The ballet Kafka focuses on selected moments of his family and intimate life – on the relationships that shaped him, the tension between duty and desire, between family and freedom. The NdB Ballet presents Kafka as an ordinary man with everyday worries and doubts, stripping away the layers of legend about the dark loner that have grown around him. The première of the ballet Kafka will take place on 24 October 2025 at 7:00 p.m. at the Janáček Theatre.
"I draw not only on his literary legacy, but also on Kafka's personal life, which was rife with uncertainty, doubts, but also a longing for understanding and love. I want to bring to the stage a truthful, human portrait of a man who grappled all his life with his relationships – with his authoritarian father, his beloved sister, and the fascinating, often unattainable women who entered his life and shaped his work, explains choreographer Markéta Pimek Habalová.
Kafka will also be exceptional in the way it is done. Director-choreographer Habalová is collaborating with two other choreographers, a highly unusual concept for a standalone title. She interweaves Kafka’s personal life within her concept together with Barbora Rašková and Glen Lambrecht, who portray The Metamorphosis and The Trial. Thus, within a single evening the audience gains different perspectives on Kafka’s personality and work, as well as the stylistic variety of individual choreographic voices.
The short story The Metamorphosis is realised by Barbora Rašková, who says of her approach: "The Metamorphosis attracts me mainly with the strange tension between what it describes – an extreme, absurd situation – and how it describes it – calmly, tersely, without emotion. It is this contrast that creates the atmosphere that is essential for me: bizarre, quiet, yet full of inner turmoil. And that's the very atmosphere I want to bring to the stage."
In the second part of the evening, Glen Lambrecht rounds off with his treatment of Kafka's novel The Trial: "In my ballet adaptation, Kafka and Josef K. merge into a single character trapped in the nightmare of a system where logic and identity slowly disintegrate. The protagonist is abducted and drawn into an absurd, ritualised process run by bureaucratic creatures and invisible judges, culminating in a symbolic execution. I want to show how an individual loses himself in the face of an omnipotent, elusive system – and ultimately becomes complicit in his own condemnation."
The Kafka will be remarkable in one more respect. For the first time, every dancer from the main company, the junior NdB 2 and the NdB 3 project is jointly involved in creating a single production. The juniors even have a dedicated section, a part inspired by The Metamorphosis. The mature dancers, on the other hand, appear as Kafka's parents. The creative team further includes designers Pavel Knolle and David Janošek, who were working with the choreographer on Prokofiev's Cinderella.
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