Back by popular demand are William Forsythe’s Blake Works IV (The Barre Project), and, for ONE NIGHT ONLY, Robert Garland’s Return, a “witty fusion of ballet technique and street gait” (The New York Times) set to the music of James Brown and Aretha Franklin. New works include the NY premiere of Robert Bondara‘s Take Me With You, a contemporary pas de deux set to the music of Radiohead, and the Company debut of George Balanchine’s Pas de Dix, a classical delight for 10 dancers. Join us for the audacious vision for ballet that is Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Robert Bondara is a Polish dancer, choreographer, director, teacher and was for many years a dancer with the Polish National Ballet. Since 2018 Robert has been Ballet Director of the Poznan Opera Ballet in Poland.

Robert is a graduate of the Feliks Parnell State Ballet School in Lodz, the Warsaw School of Economics and the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, where  he worked as a teacher (2007-2018). He began his career performing with the Music Theatre in Lodz and later moved to the Poznan Opera Ballet. In 2005 he joined the Polish National Ballet where he performed in works by Jiří Kylián, John Cranko, Krzysztof Pastor, Emanuel Gat, William Forsythe, John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, Frederick Ashton to mention a few.

He received the 2nd prize (no 1st prize was awarded) and the special prize of the Witold Lutoslawski Society at the Bronislava Nijinska National Choreography Competition in Warsaw (2008) and Jan Kiepura Award in the category “The Best Choreographer in 2011” in Poland. He also participated in the International Competition for Choreographers in Hannover in 2013 and 2015. More recently, he won “Le Prix de Biarritz award” in Emergent Choreographers Contest in Bordeaux  in 2018. That same year, he received the Jan Kiepura Award in three categories: “The Best Choreographer” for Świtezianka with Polish National Ballet and “The Best Director” and ‘The Best Performance in Poland’ for his first opera The Baltic Legend with Poznan Opera House. He has also been awarded The Brown Medal for ‘Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis’.

Robert began to choreograph for the Polish National Ballet’s Choreographic Workshops,  many of which went on to be presented in the chamber repertoire of the company. As a guest choreographer he has staged works in Poland an abroad, including Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius, Czech National Ballet, Chemnitz Ballet (Germany), Company E  in Washington (USA), Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet Theatre (Russia), Kielce Dance Theater (Poland), Opera Nova Ballet in Bydgoszcz (Poland),  Wroclaw Opera Ballet (Poland), Poznan Opera Ballet (Poland), Silesian Opera House in Bytom (Poland), Moving Arts in Kansas City (USA) and for Polish National Ballet.

His choreography has been presented around the globe, including  the 43rd International Dance Festival in Kuopio, Finland, the Polish Dance Competition in Gdansk, Didura Festival in Sanok, at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, Dance Salad Festival in Houston, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Dancing Poznan – XIII International Dance Theatres Festival, Roberto Bolle and Friends Galas throughout Italy, the Xinjiang International Dance Festival in China, STS Festival in Warsaw, in the programmes of the II – VI Days of Dance Festival in the Polish National Opera, and at galas and festivals in Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary, Norway, China, Czech Republic, and Japan.