“When I received my diploma, I made up my mind: if dancing does not work out, if I fail to reach a truly meaningful standard – then I would rather stop altogether. Even with such a perfectionist resolve, years went by. In the meantime, I consoled myself (as most young dancers do) by thinking: ‘They know what I can do anyway.’ The truth is that on stage it is never enough to prove oneself just once. You must prove yourself constantly and without pause. That is the profession. When I realised this, I started working again in the afternoons. What moments of despair those were… I felt as though I had forgotten everything. Everything I had learned over nine long years.” – recalled Lilla Pártay in 1972, at the time of her first resounding successes in Hungary, in an interview with Ilona Gantner.
The dancer, who graduated with distinction in 1961 from the last class of the distinguished ballet master Ferenc Nádasi (1910–1966), former director of the Állami Balett Intézet (State Ballet Institute, predecessor of today’s Hungarian Dance University), spent several years as a member of the corps de ballet of the Hungarian State Opera, “in the last row”, as she put it. After some years she herself began to urge the management to give her an opportunity to prove her talent.
In 1968 she competed, prepared by the internationally renowned Russian dancer and teacher Olga Lepeshinskaya (1901–2008), who also played a significant role in Hungarian ballet training, at the recently founded (in 1964) but rapidly prestigious Varna International Ballet Competition. With her partner Ferenc Barbay she represented the Hungarian contingent alone. At that exceptional event – which at the time brought together, in a rare and ground-breaking way, the leading dancers of both East and West and became a launchpad for many outstanding international careers – she won a bronze medal as a performer and received the prize for best choreography for her piece Pas de deux from Manon.
Lilla Pártay worked in the ballet corps of the Hungarian State Opera for nearly a decade (1961–1969) before moving abroad to Germany, where between 1970 and 1975 she danced leading roles in both Munich (in the West) and Berlin (in the East). In 1970 she became a soloist of the Budapest Opera Ballet. In Munich, at the Bayerische Staatsoper (Bavarian State Opera), she appeared in the dual leading role of Odette–Odile, while at the Komische Oper Berlin she performed the title role in Cinderella and the leading role in Othello, in choreographies and productions by Tom Schilling and Boris Blacher. She was invited to Munich by the world-famous choreographer John Cranko (1927–1973), who died tragically young a few years later, and to the Komische Oper by its founder, Walter Felsenstein (1901–1975).
From 1970 onwards, the young dancer began receiving increasingly important assignments at home as well. She appeared both as a new cast member in leading roles from earlier productions and as a memorable performer in newly premiered ballets that achieved great success. Shortly after her engagement in Munich, she appeared as Odette–Odile in the Budapest production of Swan Lake. Critic Zsuzsa Kaán wrote of her interpretation: “Her magnificent portrayal of the Swan […] became the overture to her succession of leading roles in nineteenth-century and contemporary ballets, and the 1972 Liszt Prize-winning ballerina has matured into a true artist.”
Writing of her performance as Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, critic István Albert observed: “With supple, meticulously refined classical culture, she transformed the character into an abstract, fairy-tale being. Her solo variations were of memorable beauty, especially in the famous Rose Adagio with her suitors, and most of all in the final act’s grand pas de deux and solo with the prince.”
One of Lilla Pártay’s most iconic and frequently revisited roles was that of The Girl in A csodálatos mandarin (The Miraculous Mandarin), first in László Seregi’s 1970 version (and later in the choreographer’s subsequent reworking of it), then in Gyula Harangozó’s choreography (originally premiered in 1956), and, as a mature artist, in Aurél Milloss’s production – which brought his earlier adaptation, first staged after Seregi’s, finally to Budapest nearly two decades later. Altogether, she danced the role in four different versions.
In 1971 she appeared with great success at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow during the Hungarian State Opera’s guest performances there. In 1975, following a rehearsal process in Brussels with five fellow dancers, she excelled in the Budapest premiere of Would This Be Death? by Maurice Béjart.
After the success of The Miraculous Mandarin, László Seregi entrusted her with further leading roles in two of his major works, Sylvia and Spartacus.
In 1981, by then newly honoured with the title Kiváló Művész (Distinguished Artist, a state distinction for exceptional artistic achievement), Lilla Pártay was praised by dance critic Ágnes Gelencsér in the following terms:
“She is one of the most significant performers in contemporary Hungarian ballet. Her professional stature rests above all on her gift for evoking atmosphere, her sense of humour, her dramatic expressiveness, and her musicality. And let us add: not only on the Hungarian ballet stage. With her enchanting portrayal of Giselle, Sylvia, and many other appearances, she has earned international fame. In La fille mal gardée (The Wayward Daughter), one of the best-known works of the international repertoire, she can hold her own with the finest interpreters – including the English ballerinas themselves. From the moment she appears, she captivates her audience, and through her consciously elaborated performance she sustains tension throughout. Her emotional, lyrical roles and her timid ingénues have already become unforgettable; but we must also mention the superbly shaped figure of the girl (chosen to be the sacrificial victim) in Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), and among her many other roles, the ethereal female figure of Would This Be Death?, as well as her most recent success, the street girl in Harangozó’s version of The Miraculous Mandarin.”
Critics consistently emphasise her versatility as an interpreter and her sensitivity to both lyricism and realism. Ethereal and dramatic, charming and austere – she is a multifaceted artist endowed with a rich expressive palette. “Lilla Pártay does not merely depict the figure but its individuality; she does not shape a homogeneous character but the psychologically motivated natural history of that character. For her, in every detail, content is primary – and the poetry emanating from her movements ennobles it further and brings it close to human experience,” wrote dance critic Zsuzsa Kaán in 1977.
During the first decade and a half of her performing career, following the early “overture” of Berlin, Munich and Moscow, Lilla Pártay showcased her talent across the globe – from Monte Carlo to Milan, from Peru to Lebanon. Among the mentors and artistic “helpers” she always mentioned with emphasis were Olga Lepeshinskaya, Ferenc Nádasi, and György Lőrinc (ballet master and ballet director), while her frequent stage partner in numerous productions was Ferenc Havas.
Pártay often recalled one of Lepeshinskaya’s key sentences from the time when she was gradually transforming from a performer into a creator – from dancer to dance composer: “Never forget – when you already know everything, your body will leave you…” For Lilla Pártay, the moment of that definitive transition came in 1995.
Having proved herself in countless roles – learning and drawing inspiration from each – more than fifteen years after the short duet she created for Varna, Lilla Pártay began choreographing, now thinking on a much larger scale. Before her first full-length ballet (Anna Karenina, 1991), she had already created several shorter pieces. “I had received so much even back in my days as a corps dancer – so many valuable experiences. Later, from my succession of leading roles, I gained numerous impressions, and from the great master choreographers under whom I had the privilege to work, I gleaned many secrets. Drawing from this endlessly rich treasury, I embarked upon independent creation. I learned an incredible amount, and still I do not know enough,” she stated in an interview with Kinga Jálics in 2002, exactly two decades after her first large-scale premiere.
Dance critic Ágnes Gelencsér attempted to capture the turning point in her development as a creator in a 1998 portrait sketch: “Lilla Pártay always viewed herself and her roles with a sense of conscious reflection. She was a relentless critic of her own work, and she laboured with full concentration on her body and soul for every role. Perhaps it was the meeting of extraordinary sensitivity and awareness that made her a dedicated choreographer as well. There are hardly any examples in the history of ballet of such an outstanding dancer-performer becoming a truly significant creator.”
Pártay recalled the circumstances surrounding the birth of her first ‘adult’ choreographies in these words: “In 1986, ballet director Antal Fodor decided to give young choreographers an opportunity within a chamber ballet company. […] I applied as well and ventured forth with Liszt’s Forgotten Waltzes. […] Then, within the framework of the Liszt Year, I created Funérailles, which was also well received. I was touched by the magic of choreographing…” – she remembered in an interview with Györgyi Mátai.
In her statements as a debuting choreographer, Pártay often explained that her working method is fundamentally defined by the fact that music ignites her choreographic imagination; she does not begin by thinking in terms of narrative. “Since I have lived all my life for and in dance, by now I have within me a veritable treasury of steps, movements and forms. Each of them is simply waiting for the call of the music to come alive,” she said in an interview with Judit Szántó R. in 1986.
From the 1980s onwards, she created the choreography for several opera productions at the Hungarian State Opera, including Romeo and Juliet, Salome, Nabucco and Das Dreimäderlhaus (House of the Three Girls). From the mid-1990s she also choreographed and designed dance interludes for spoken-drama productions. Between 1986 and 1990 she served as ballet director, ballet master and choreographer of the Budapesti Operettszínház (Budapest Operetta & Musical Theatre).
The idea for her first large-scale ballet, Anna Karenina, took shape in 1987 in Tampere, Finland, where Lilla Pártay was working on the choreography of a grand operetta production (Viktória by Pál Ábrahám). Speaking about Anna Karenina, Pártay described the creation of literary adaptations as the most appealing task for “a contemporary choreographer”. “The most important thing is a good, a truly good story – one in which something really happens – and such stories are found first and foremost among the great classics. In their works, the whole of human life finds artistic expression, or, more pathetically put, existence itself. Especially in Tolstoy’s writings. But destinies, families, and the stories of lives are being written in our own time as well. And can anything be more fascinating, more stirring, or more relevant than the romance of life itself?” – she said in an interview on the occasion of the premiere.
The three-act ballet marked a powerful opening to Pártay’s new creative path. Surrounded by both critical and popular acclaim, the work became the starting point of a new phase in her artistic career. “The creator possesses something that only few do: she presents to us the physical delineation of inner tremors, of the anxious heart, of the pain of a suppressed sigh – with the dignity befitting a poet of dance,” wrote Márta Péter in her review of the production.
In 1994, newly awarded the Kossuth Prize (Hungary’s highest state award for artistic and cultural achievement), Pártay brought the Othello story to the ballet stage under the title A velencei mór (lit. The Moor of Venice), set to music by Franz Schubert. In 2001 she premiered her choreography Concerto, based on the life of Béla Bartók. Comprising five movements, it depicted in its successive scenes the composer’s childhood, his student years in Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia), his inner struggles in adulthood, his travels in Transylvania, his concert tours across Europe, and finally his emigration.
In 2002, within the framework of a ballet gala in honour of Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960 – Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator) at the Erkel Theatre, Budapest, Pártay’s one-act choreography Szimfonikus percek (Symphonic Minutes) was presented on stage. Barely a year later came another ballet of Anna Karenina scale – Amadeus. “Mozart was an extraordinary childlike soul because he sincerely believed that the world was good. He had an immense hunger for love. When he escaped from the protection of the parental home and began to live independently, many took advantage of his naïve purity. His exceptional talent was not truly appreciated during his lifetime. His other side was simple, human: he loved to have fun, to be among people, to ‘plunge into life’…” – wrote Pártay in the programme notes of the grand two-act ballet presenting the composer’s life story from birth to death.
Like her earlier choreographies, her next full-length work – Gone with the Wind, adapted from the legendary novel – was the realisation of a long-cherished plan, though this time it came to fruition only after many years of preparation and involuntary waiting. The three-act production, premiered in 2007, was also a world premiere: the first ballet adaptation ever of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. Pártay had already proposed the idea to the management of the Hungarian State Opera in the second half of the 1990s, but due to copyright issues it could only reach audiences a decade later, even though both the musical concept and most of the choreography had been completed years earlier. The musical score was compiled by conductor Ádám Medveczky from Antonín Dvořák’s symphonies and chamber works, with additional music by Zoltán Rácz and the Amadinda Percussion Group. “I always seek themes that present a great challenge to the corps de ballet, where there are not merely two or three dancers on stage. Themes that no one before me has yet attempted,” said the choreographer on the occasion of the premiere.
Lilla Pártay’s most recent choreography, created in 2013, was Aranyecset (lit. The Golden Brush), a ballet inspired by György Dallos’s two-volume novel on the life of the painter Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900). Set to the music of Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz, this three-act dance work was a grand-scale enterprise depicting the key stages and turning points of the artist’s life – a work that Pártay regarded as a kind of creative summation of her career. In her statements about the piece, the choreographer – who herself came from a family of visual artists – also emphasised her personal motivation.
“When the idea first began to occupy my mind, Munkácsy’s Christ Trilogy was already being toured around the country, and that aroused my interest. I first saw the three enormous, magnificent paintings together in the Hungarian National Gallery, forming one great whole. I remember being utterly overwhelmed and enchanted, though at the same time their monumental nature was somewhat intimidating. In the end, I did not base the ballet directly on the paintings themselves, but on Sándor Dallos’s biographical novel, from which one learns that Munkácsy’s life was unbelievably exciting. I felt that, dramaturgically, I could not find a better subject than to transform this into dance,” she said in an interview with Zsófia Krupa about her creative motivations.
[2016]