German première

A king had 12 sons and one daughter. When his wife died, he remarried and didn’t know that his new wife was a witch. She wishes death onto the brothers, who turn into ravens and are able to fly away. Their sister makes every effort to end this nightmare. With bravery and skill, she succeeds in finding the brothers and transforming them back into humans.

The ballet »Juodvarniai« (»Black birds«) is based on the Lithuanian fairy tale »Dvylika brolių, juodvarniais lakstančių« (»The twelve brothers, twelve black ravens«), which has clear parallels to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale »Die wilden Schwäne« (»The wild swans«, 1838). The piece examines this material for motifs of contemporary existence: journeys as well as transformations – the brothers turn into ravens, the children into adults.

Lina Puodžiukaitė-Lanauskienė, born in 1981 in Kaunas, studied dance in the USA. She taught at the Lincoln Center Institute in New York. She has been dancing, teaching and choreographing at the AURA dance theatre in Kaunas since 2006. In 2011, she began her career as a teacher
and vice-director of the state ballet school Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in Vilnius, Lithuania’s only professional ballet school. Her choreography »Juodvarniai« is based on the composition »Music for 18 musicians« by Steve Reich, which premiered in 1976 in New York.