20.03.2026 | 7.00 PM (subscription concert)
21.03.2026 | 7.00 PM (non-subscription concert)
Main Stage, Odeska 1 Street
Concert under the Honorary Patronage of the Marshal of the Podlaskie Voivodeship Łukasz Prokorym
Button Moulder dance performance to the music of E. Grieg – Peer Gynt – Orchestral Suite I and II
The performance is inspired by characters from Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt , but it does not tell the story from the play nor does it reconstruct its characters. Symbollic figure of Button Moulder becomes a starting point – not as a stage character, but as a rule: an impersonal moment of confrontation with the truth about oneself. In Ibsen’s drama, hi is the one who appears at the end of Peer Gynt’s life to reckon with it. In the performance, his presence does not take human form. It manifests itself in rhythm, silence, the repetition of gestures, and the sudden stops in movement—as an inevitable experience.
Peer Gynt doesn’t appear here as a single character. He’s dispersed throughout the performers’ bodies and exists as a collective figure. Each embodies a different aspect of the same condition: the desire to be different, the escape from decision, the need for uniqueness, the fear of finality. The protagonist of the play is not an individual, but a state—the experience of modern man operating in a reality of overflowing possibilities and constant temporariness.
Button Moulder is thus a choreographic study of a moment of reckoning—a moment when a person confronts their own weaknesses and is unable to look away. The performance doesn’t resolve whether such a confrontation leads to transformation. It leaves the question open: is awareness sufficient to transform one’s life, or is it merely a brief flash of clarity, after which everything returns to its previous rhythm.
Karolina Garbacik
E. Grieg – Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
The first part of the evening will feature E. Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, written in 1868 for the pianist and conductor Edmund Neupert, who first preformed the solo part in Copenhagen in 1868. Shortly afterwards, the piece was presented in Leipzig, but unlike the work’s enthusiastic reception in his native Norway, in Germany was subjected to extremely harsh criticism. This music combines romantic emotionality with elements of Scandinavian folklore, resonating with the rythms of Norwegian dances, such as springar or halling. The solo part will perform Mateusz Dubiel – a participant in the last edition of the Chopin Competition.
Orchestra and Ballet of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic will be conducted by Maestro Tomasz Tokarczyk.
