Robert Bondara
Robert Bondara (b. 1983 in Lodz, Poland) is considered one of the most talented young Polish choreographers, who is also active as director and dance teacher. He began his career performing with the ballet company of the Music Theatre in Lodz, which he joined after graduating from the local Feliks Parnell State Ballet School in 2002, and later moved to the Poznan Opera Ballet. In 2005 he joined the Polish National Ballet where he reached the rank of coryphée and performed in works by Jiří Kylián, John Cranko, Krzysztof Pastor, Emanuel Gat, William Forsythe, John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, Frederick Ashton, to mention a few. At that time, he also received diplomas from the Warsaw School of Economics and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, where he subsequently worked as a ballet teacher (2007–2018).
His choreographic debut with Andante con moto to Wojciech Kilar’s Piano Concerto at the Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki brought him public and critical attention, as well as instant recognition by awarding him 2nd prize (no 1st prize was awarded) and the special prize of the Witold Lutosławski Society at the Bronislava Nijinska National Choreography Competition in Warsaw (2008). In later years he created a series of short pieces for the “Creations” – annual choreography workshops, initiated by the artistic director of the Polish National Ballet, Krzysztof Pastor, in 2009 – including When You End and I Begin… (2009), The Garden’s Gate (2010), 8m68 (2012), Transfer Coefficient (2014), Hiccup (2015), Take Me with You (2016), and Verses (2018), many of which went on to be presented in the chamber repertoire of the company. In collaboration with the Polish National Ballet, he also produced the evening-length ballet Persona (2011), one-act ballet Nevermore…? commemorating the centenary of WWI (2014), and Eugeniusz Morawski’s two-act ballet Świtezianka after Adam Mickiewicz’s ballad (2017).
From 2011 to 2012 Bondara worked as guest choreographer with the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, where he debuted with full evening ballet The Captive Mind after the eponymous philosophical essay by Nobel prize winner Czesław Miłosz, for which he won Jan Kiepura Award in the category “The Best Choreographer in 2011”. He has also been awarded The Brown Medal for ‘Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis’. In 2016 he was decorated with the Bronze Medal for ‘Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis’ – Poland’s highest distinction awarded for outstanding cultural and artistic achievements.
In 2018, Bondara was appointed Ballet Director of the Poznan Opera Ballet in Poland. That same year, he was announced among the winners of “Le Prix de Biarritz” in the Emergent Choreographers Contest in Bordeaux and received three more Jan Kiepura Awards in the categories of Best Choreographer for Świtezianka with the Polish National Ballet and Best Director and Best Performance in Poland for his first opera production of Feliks Nowowiejski’s The Baltic Legend with the Poznan Opera House.
In the recent years, his list of productions expanded to include the double bill of Medea / Sheherazade (2018) at the Silesian Opera in Bytom, Stanisław Moniuszko’s one-act ballet In the Quarters (2019) at the Castle Opera in Szczecin, Don Juan after Molière’s comedy (2020) and Take Me with You to Radiohead’s music (shown as part of the triple bill BER with choreographies by Alexander Ekman and Martynas Rimeikis, 2021) at the Poznan Opera House, and Przemysław Zych’s new ballet for children Alice in Wonderland (2022) at the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz.
His choreography has been presented around the globe in dance festivals, competitions and gala events. As guest choreographer he has also has staged works in Norway, the Czech Republic, Germany, the United States, Hungary and Lithuania. His name first attracted the attention of Lithuanian audiences in 2013, when he staged Giedrius Kuprevičius’ two-act ballet Čiurlionis at the Lithuania National Opera and Ballet Theatre. After the premiere, Lithuanian ballet reviewer Helmutas Šabasevičius summed up his impressions saying that Bondara’s “choreography relies on the principles of contemporary dance, which rebut the notion of dance as a rigid set of formulas or a hallowed canon. His self-possessed, refined directorial approach and plastic language form an organic unity.” In the autumn 2020, when all the theatres were closed down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Bondara made his debut at the Klaipėda State Music Theatre with the televised premiere of Faust. It received its second premiere with live audience in May 2021 and was nominated for the highest Lithuanian theatre award – the Golden Stage Cross.
