What is a park? Something between jungle and garden, nature and culture, the wild and the tame. A human? If park could be perceived as an image of the soul, as an inner landscape, then yes a lot can happen there. And not always what you expect.
Mats Ek on The Park:
“A park: the lungs of a city, a patch of disciplined nature with straight lines and vegetation trimmed like geometric figures, friendly and lush greenery coupled with messy angles and hidden corners. A park, between jungle and garden, between nature and culture, between the wild and the tamed. Much like a human being. The park could be seen as a picture of the soul, of the innards of a human being.”
Mats Ek believes that these reflections began on one of the many mornings he passed Humlegården (a large open green area in central Stockholm) on his way to work over a twelve year period. The Park is made up of nine episodes, nine different short ballets with varying characters and content, comprising pieces of our lives.
“In all the scenes there is a charged relationship between destructive forces and life affirming ones, moving forward with different emphasis on one or the other,” says Mats Ek. The Park as an entity also changes its meaning,at once a forest but then the trunks of trees can transform into the pillars of a ballroom. One can see The Park as a continuation of the work Eldstad, where the setting is the only cohesive element, while its significance is ambiguousand multifaceted. Where Eldstad was open for a continuation, a work in progress, The Park, on the other hand, was from the outset a unified entity.
Marie-Louise de Geer Bergenstråhle created the scenography, the sixth collaboration between herself and Mats Ek.
The composers whose music is used as many as The Park’s episodes: Camille Saint-Saens, Ingvar Lidholm, Mikis Theodorakis, Richard Wagner, Jean Sibelius, Arne Nordheim, Carl Nielsen and George Elkin.
The environment, the park, is the only unifying element. In it two figures appear consistently: an Edward the Black Prince character, a classic embodiment of a romantic prince seeking his bride to be, and a municipal worker who sets things right and tidies up.