2024-05-16 05:46:10
Dancer, actor and trainer Vlastimil Harapes died this Wednesday on the age of 77 after an extended sickness. This was introduced by the spokesman of the Nationwide Theater Tomáš Staněk. Harapes was a long-time soloist of his ballet firm, which he later led as inventive director. On the finish of his engagement, he turned an honorary member of the Nationwide Theatre, in 2016 he entered its corridor of fame.
“Forty-two years on this theater, it was my dwelling,” he remarked on the time. “Dancing is liberating, I’ve all the time felt free and free. Somebody as soon as mentioned which you can dance wherever and anytime – if not in any other case, then no less than in your coronary heart. Dance,” a visibly moved Harapes urged the viewers as he was ushered into the corridor fame.
The dancer, choreographer and trainer already gained the Thalia Award in 2012 for lifetime dance mastery. He sacrificed loads for his occupation, however his identify was not solely related to it. Harapes additionally acted in movies and sang. He additionally tried to interrupt into politics when he ran for the Senate for the ANO motion in autumn 2016, however was unsuccessful. Lately, he was the inventive director of the Prague Worldwide Conservatory.
His identify has change into synonymous with Czech ballet for a lot of. Vlastimil Harapes labored on the stage of the Czech First Stage for 20 years, throughout which era he created round 5 dozen roles. Along with his bodily disposition and glorious method, he additionally made good use of his appearing expertise.
He was a soloist of the Nationwide Theater ballet till 1988, after November 1989 he labored because the inventive director of the corporate for 12 years.
Tough beginnings
The journey of a boy from the village of Drožkovice within the Chomutovsk area to ballet was a bit harking back to the film story of Billy Elliot. Harapes was born on July 24, 1946 because the sixth little one, Benjamin, and the one boy within the household. The sisters have been a lot older.
Vlastimil Harapes and Marta Drottnerová within the ballet Swan Lake, Nationwide Theatre, 1975. | Picture: CTK
He had no need for ballet since he was a toddler. So as to burn off his power as a energetic little one, he first went to a music and rhythmic college. “I needed to play the violin. I suppose I preferred the case so that everybody may see that I play the violin. However my mother and father most popular the piano that was at dwelling,” he recalled of his childhood in a big household. It was on the music college that my mom discovered rhythm. “She mentioned to herself: our Vlastík retains singing to himself and leaping round, I am going to signal him in in order that it will get some order,” paraphrased the later grasp of his subject.
In 1960, he was admitted to the Prague Conservatory, however the beginnings have been tough. He struggled with classical dance till the fourth 12 months earlier than he understood why he had to do that or that motion to precise precisely what he wanted. Nonetheless, he graduated with honors and in 1966 bought a contract with the Nationwide Theatre. In a approach, Harapes additionally fulfilled his mom’s ballet dream. He later improved his expertise throughout an internship in what was then Leningrad with Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, who, amongst different issues, skilled dance stars Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. “I noticed Baryshnikov when he was coaching with us, and that was an incredible expertise,” he recalled.
Harapes carried out in roughly 50 dance productions of the primary scene. He additionally danced on various world levels, from 1977 to 1983 he was an everyday visitor on the German Rhineland Opera in Düsseldorf and Duisburg.
A key second in his profession got here in 1971, when he was appointed soloist of the ballet and skilled his first success in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. The viewers is not going to overlook his Mercutio, in whom he instilled swagger, humor and provocative rascality, nor Romeo, whom he danced for 20 years.
Successes elevated each at dwelling and overseas, for instance in Germany, in addition to roles – from princes in Swan Lake and Giselle to the wonderful Spartak or Faun in Faun’s Afternoon.
Harapes stopped lively dancing on the age of 45. He mentioned goodbye to the primary scene with the position of Romeo in 1988, however he nonetheless led the ballet firm Laterna magika and danced Odysseus within the mission of the identical identify. Between 1990 and 2002, he was the choreographer and head of the ballet of the Nationwide Theatre.
“I used to be happy once they mentioned that the ballet was in good situation. After all, the corporate bought youthful, it was not straightforward as a result of I began bossing some colleagues who have been the identical age and even older,” he recalled on tv. He in contrast his dramaturgical exercise to meals. “As a lot as I like a wealthy menu, I’ve all the time wished that I may supply that all-you-can-eat as the pinnacle of the ballet,” he claimed.
Miroslava Pešíková and Vlastimil Harapes within the ballet Swan Lake, Nationwide Theatre, 1982. | Picture: CTK
Transition to appearing
Harapes didn’t remorse leaving. “I’m the one ballet dancer on the planet who has reoriented himself to an actor, each musical and so-called critical,” he commented on the change of artistic work.
He began appearing whereas finding out. After his debut position as a part-time employee in 1964’s Outdated Males on Hops, he appeared as younger Kristián in Markéta Lazarová. The melodrama Day for my love from 1976 with Marta Vančurová and the comedies pull out a stool from a whale and get dad to a correctional facility introduced him nice reputation amongst viewers. “The beginning second was Pull a Stool from a Whale. So at the moment I used to be getting lots of admiring letters, after all from girls,” he recalled of the interval when, in response to him, he was on the peak of his fame.
Vlastimil Harapes in 2019. | Picture: Profimedia.cz
However Harapes additionally acted within the fairy story The Virgin and the Beast or the movies Operation My Daughter and within the new millennium Bolero, the place he performed Father Cihan.
He left the dance profession as a result of “dance is the artwork of the younger, energetic, energetic”, he mentioned years later. “In dance there may be communion with music, right here once more with phrases. For me, drama has fully changed dancing, which one is now not bodily able to. Quite the opposite, a sure maturity could be utilized in drama and musicals,” he in contrast.
Harapes was additionally a decide of varied dance competitions, he additionally appeared as an arbiter within the TV present StarDance and within the Slovak competitors Hvězdy na leda.
He devoted himself to charity initiatives, from 1990 he was the honorary chairman of the Czech Particular Olympics motion for individuals with psychological disabilities, sat on the board of the Kilian Basis, and was the honorary president of the Balet Globa civic affiliation.
Within the 2016 Senate elections, he ran as a non-party candidate for the ANO 2011 motion within the Prague 6 district. He completed in fourth place with 13.3 p.c of the vote, however didn’t advance to the second spherical.
Harapes was married twice – his wives have been actress and psychotherapist Elena Strupková and singer Hana Zagorová. “I feel I’ve lived a unprecedented life. I jumped by way of it in a single go,” he laughed on the TV present Extraordinary Lives. “It is nice when individuals discover themselves in what they’ve the disposition for,” he said.
Vlastimil Harapes as Odysseus in a efficiency of Laterna magika, 1988. | Picture: CTK
Evaluations
Necessary personalities keep in mind Harapes as a world-class dancer, because of whom most people was on this subject. Director of the Nationwide Theater Jan Burian says that Harapes was not solely top-of-the-line dancers of his time, but in addition an individual with private allure.
“We really feel deep disappointment as a result of an vital theater actor has handed away, who in his time belonged to the perfect dancers of a top quality similar to the world and who on the identical time was in a position to appeal to the eye of most people to the artwork of dance along with his private allure, utilized in genuine appearing,” mentioned Burian.
In accordance with the director of the Tanec Praha pageant, Yvona Kreuzmannová, Harapes confirmed how tough the lifetime of dancers is and that it’s essential to worth their work. “For me, he was primarily essentially the most wonderful dancer, I skilled him within the 80s, after I was new to the scene and I used to be enthusiastic about his expertise. I feel he made a pleasant enterprise card for the dance world,” she states. “He made the general public conscious of how tough the lifetime of a dancer is. I see his nice contribution on this, that he made the sector of dance very seen,” emphasizes Kreuzmannová.
The dancer can also be remembered by the presenter Honza Dědek, on whose speak present Harapes he appeared in 2022. “If I can decide as a easy viewer, I valued him as an incredible dancer who did unbelievable issues for our ballet. I knew him as a gentleman and really humorous and a noble particular person. And I’ve already forgiven him for taking on Soňa Červená at a dance,” provides Honza Dědek.