The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Kročil's a rising star on Czech ballet stage

August 22nd, 2008

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Kročil's a rising star on Czech ballet stage

Dancer takes on Escamillio role in Prague premiere of Causa Carmen

By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
June 11th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

Former boy wonder Richard Kročil danced the lead role to Giselle at 17. After 12 years onstage, he says he feels more relaxed.

Photo by HANA SMEJKALOVÁ

The Kročil file

Parents enroll him in dance classes at young age to harness his energy
Becomes a principal dancer at 17 years old
Spends three years dancing with Washington Ballet in the United States
Dances two new roles on the National Theater stage

Causa Carmen

When: June 14, 18 and 24 at 7; June 15 at 2 and 7
Where: National Theater
Tickets: 50-800 Kč

Escamillio, the male lead figure in Causa Carmen, is a Spanish Gypsy’s toreador lover — handsome and famous, with stunning good looks.

So it’s no surprise that Richard Kročil, the dancer handpicked to play the ballet role, says his own character is very similar to Escamillio’s. Kročil says Escamillio is “charming, passionate and egotistical as well, admired by man and woman.” The ballet is a one-hour rendition of Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen.

It will be Kročil’s second debut performance this year in Prague when Causa Carmen opens at the National Theater June 14. Earlier this spring, he premiered the lead role of James in the National Theater Ballet’s production of La Sylphide.

All of the recent attention gives the dancer a great feeling of “coming home” to work in the Czech Republic. Because, despite having first stepped on stage as a star at 17 years old, Kročil only today at 29 looks like he’s starting to feel at home in his art.

That relaxation can be chalked up to a number of things, Kročil admits, from better technique to more social maturity. He says his new professional home in Prague also plays a significant role after relocating from Brno to the capital just a few months ago.

“I was very happy, because [as a young Czech dancer] I never thought I would come here to this company,” the dancer says.

With all the attention, Kročil seems to be the rising star of the moment, with his looks matching the languid extensions and powerful leaps he makes. On the National Theater stage, his talent and appeal resonate to the back row.

Prime roles and impressed fans aren’t new to the dancer, though, as Kročil’s path to the Golden City twisted from the Czech Republic to the United States and back again.

Kročil is from Karviná, a mining town in the far-eastern corner of the Czech Republic. The arts came into his life as an attempted relief for his parents, as the young Richard was full of boundless energy.

“They tried everything they could” to keep me busy, Kročil says with a laugh. When piano and flute lessons failed, his parents enrolled him in a dance class.

After two hours, Kročil decided he hated it, but his parents wouldn’t let him off the artistic hook. And his teachers immediately recognized the innate talent before them.

Not long after beginning ballet lessons, Kročil was recommended to audition for a larger dance school in Ostrava. He remembers stretching in preparation for the audition, and the teachers getting “so excited” upon seeing his flexibility. Kročil enrolled in the Ostrava conservatory at age 12, and graduated in 1997.

Before completing his studies though, at 17 years old, Kročil was offered the lead role of Albert in the National Moravian-Silesian Theater Ballet’s production of Giselle. It was an unconventional move for the company’s director, Igor Vejsada, to make, but one in which he followed his instincts.

“I was very scared and I asked him, ‘Are you sure I could make it?’ ” Kročil recalls.

Vejsada was sure.

Today, Vejsada says, “I was very happy with Richard’s performance in Giselle and had the feeling that having him as a valuable permanent member of the ballet ensemble of [the theater] could be a large benefit for all of us.”

He offered Kročil membership in the company as a principal dancer.

Skipping ranks to top billing as a teenager provided a fantastic professional opportunity, but an awkward social position.

Kročil admits that he wasn’t mature enough then to handle any resentment among company members or the sense of entitlement he adopted. He describes the company as a snake pit, with everyone watching him to witness any stumbles. And he describes his teenage self as obstinate, resisting advice from others.

At the National Moravian-Silesian Theater, Vejsada says, Kročil “created many interesting, unforgettable, charismatic soloist characters.”

However, he adds, “there was a need to keep working on his dancing technique abilities as well as working with him as a member of a team, not just the best-of-the-best soloist, since Richard is an inspired dancer but back then [had] a bit of a complicated personality.”

He tried to teach the young dancer a bit of “artistic humility.”

Today, Kročil laughs while discussing the cockiness of his early days and frequently makes contrite comments about his foolish tendencies. But his conversation is still peppered with immodest remarks about his dancing prowess.

In spite of that, Kročil is affable and endearing, and those who have seen him perform know he’s got major chops to back up any boasting.

In 2000, Kročil and two colleagues from the National Moravian-Silesian Theater traveled to dance as guests of the Brandywine Ballet in Pennsylvania. From this exposure, he received a recommendation to dance with the Washington Ballet. The company offered him membership as a principal dancer, and Kročil promptly found himself working as a new U.S. resident.

“It was the best,” he says, smiling wistfully. “It was very nice, very comfortable, very professional, and I was very surprised that they didn’t treat me like a kid.”

“The work in America was completely different,” Kročil explains, from the repertoire and technical difficulty to the interactions with other company members. Kročil was only one of many international dancers within the Washington Ballet, and that immediately made him more comfortable.

The group made up a sort of family, he says, and “there was competition, but in a good way.”

He also learned more about taking direction and pushing himself during his time in the United States, shedding some of his diva tendencies.

Learning humility

“In Washington, I learned a lot about doing all the different parts that they gave me,” Kročil says.

The most dramatic example of this came when he was cast as a step-sister in the company’s production of Cinderella. He felt upset and belittled at first, but in the end admitted that the company director was right, that getting in touch with his comic feminine side to play the show-stealing part was a beneficial experience, repertoire-wise. Plus, it was fun.

“It was so humbling for me,” he says with a repentant smile.

Following Sept. 11, 2001, numerous members of the Washington Ballet encountered difficulties renewing their visas. The visa complication coincided with Kročil’s recovery from a stress fracture, so he returned to the Czech Republic in 2003 with a promise that the Washington Ballet would do “everything possible” to get him back. In what Kročil chalks up to miscommunication and paperwork problems though, his new contract came too late for his visa to be renewed, and he remained home.

Frustrated, he chose to look forward to new possibilities rather than wade through murky documentation complications in trying to get his visa renewed and return to the United States.

“My personality is that I have my own plans,” he says. “In work, I am very picky and particular.”

Things continued in the wrong direction though, as the National Moravian-Silesian Theater Ballet declined to take him back.

“I was like, ‘I never thought this would happen,’ ” he says. Kročil recalls standing in line to collect unemployment benefits, thinking back to only a few months earlier seeing himself plastered across Washington, D.C. on Washington Ballet posters. His career had taken a distinctly wrong turn that he vowed to straighten out.

Kročil took classes at a dancing school in Ostrava to stay in shape, and looked to Brno for a new opportunity. Following up on contacts within the National Theater of Brno, he courted that company’s artistic director. Kročil was offered a principal role there after participating in just one class.

He planned to stay for one season, to get reacquainted with the stage and refine his skills, Kročil recalls. Dancing in his home country again felt right though and, other than a brief flirtation with joining the English National Ballet, he stayed in Brno through 2007.

That’s where Petr Zuska, artistic director of the National Theater Ballet in Prague, found Kročil in 2004, when he traveled to the Moravian city to stage his short work D.M.J. 1953–1977.

“During the casting I noticed Richard as somebody from a different planet compared with all other boys there — a dancer with extraordinary physical possibilities and facility, a great mover equipped with strong technique and natural sense and feeling for music and dynamics,” Zuska says.

That first collaboration led quickly to talk of Kročil coming to Prague. Now that that move has come about, Zuska says, “Richard is for my company one of the highest-level soloists with experience in many different sorts of styles and aesthetics.”

“This season is the first for Richard working and being here, and he has already made his mark [with] important roles. … I hope he will continue in this way to develop his talent and skills further and further,” says Zuska.

Kročil says he’s happy that events conspired to bring him to Prague. He appreciates his new company for its pre-eminent stature within the Czech Republic, along with Zuska’s commitment to bringing top-shelf international choreographers to teach and set works upon the National Theater Ballet’s company members. Kročil can learn and grow here, he says.

“I was a little bit scared” of coming to Prague and winning over its audience, he admits. “People don’t know me, and I have to prove a lot.” However, with his masterful execution of James in La Sylphide, he says, “I think — I hope — that happened, that the audience accepted me.”

He says he was pleasantly surprised by the good reviews of his performance and “blessed” by the kind words of fans.

To allay comments of those who fear the temperamental, precious prodigy of teenage fame in Moravia might return, Kročil feels assured that he’s learned to be “more professional, less argumentative, more diplomatic” during his 12 years on the stage.

He looks forward to more challenges to grow his talents ever further in Prague, saying, “I’m waiting for what they will surprise me with next.”

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com

Brooke Edge can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com

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