The ME-SA dance company, built around the central tandem of Martina Hajdyla Lacová and producer Karolína Hejnová, has made it again to the selection of the Aerowaves European Network. As the first Czech company, ME-SA managed to achieve this award for the third time in a row – this year with the project Let Me Die In My Footsteps by the Brazilian choreographer, currently based in Brussels, Renano Martins de Oliveira. Aerowaves is the largest European platform supporting young choreographers and their work. Every year, it allows the representatives of more than 30 countries to watch circa 500- 600 video recordings from all Europe. The last weekend in October, they meet to discuss over tens of references. The debates result in the list of 20 works which are recommended to theatres, festivals and audiences as the best of the “young blood“ to be seen at the moment on the European dance scene.„Let Me Die in My Footsteps is a purely dance performance where the movement vocabulary emerges from the urge to touch each other and be together. Four dancers find themselves in crisis which is the starting point for the inconsistent ways of conflict and solution. The project involves live performance of the original music score by the Slovenian composer Gašper Piano. Let Me Die in My Footsteps is a glimmer of hope in this rushing world where life goes so fast that it is impossible to understand many things. The choreography shows exhaustion and rebirth through new energy,” add the authors.
The project has brought together four very different artists. The two members of ME-SA Martina Hajdyla Lacová and Karolína Hejnová were joined by the Slovak dancer Soňa Ferienčíková. Masculine energy is represented by Germany‘s dancer Benjamin Pohlig, who graduated from the Belgian school of contemporary dance P.A.R.T.S., and the above-mentioned Gašper Piano.
The ME-SA dance company was found in 2008. It functions as an open platform combining authorial projects and works of guest choreographers from the Czech-Slovak and international dance scene. In 2013, ME-SA featured for the first the time on the so called Priority Companies list of Aerowaves network – it was with the project Much More Than Nothing by the choreographic duo Peter Šavel/Stano Dobák. The company has received three nominations for the Dance Piece of the Year of the Czech Dance Platform. Martina Hajdyla Lacová, one of ME-SA’s co-founders, was awarded the prize for the Dancer of the Year in 2015. It was for her performance in SuperNaturals, another project of the ME-SA company which appeared on the Aerowaves list in 2015. ME-SA presents its projects regularly at festivals such as Spring Forward, TANEC PRAHA, Czech Dance Platform, APAP/NYC and others.
More information on www.me-sa.cz.
Renan Martins started to study dance in Rio de Janeiro at Deborah Colker Movement Center, then he received the scholarship at SEAD in Salcburk and later went on to study at P.A.R.T.S (2010 – 2013). So far he has created five projects which he has presented at festivals in Brazil, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and Belgium where he returns most frequently. At present he dances in Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s project Re:Zeitung and is the member of Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods Company.
More on http://renancaldoverde.wix.com/renan-martins.
Source: Press release
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species