Tanec Praha Festival again offers range of options from 23 May to 23 June 2016 in Prague and 16 other towns and cities in the Czech Republic. Israel Galván will come to the Czech Republic for the first time ever, and the program will also feature other major figures and ensembles from the contemporary international dance scene, such as Jozef Fruček and Linda Kapetanea, Karine Ponties, Anne Van den Broek and the Anton Lachky Company. Promising talents will perform in the Dance NEWs section and the program includes a section for children and teenagers, as well as the open air dance parties, workshops and film screenings within the accompanying program."The festival will be headed by exciting flamenco freestyle genius Israel Galván, who will be performing for the first time ever in Prague," said festival director Yvona Kreuzmannová. "This leading figure of world dance will perform at the Karlín Music Theatre on June 22 and 23 with his work La Curva. It will no doubt be an extraordinary experience, also thanks in no small part to the phenomenal musicians who accompany him live."
In keeping with tradition, the festival will kick off in May with the Tanec Praha for Children section replete with children's workshops and discussions, showing the results of the Dance for Schools initiative, connected with a series of performances for children, not only in Prague.
The week will symbolically culminate with the premiere of Mirka Eliášová's MOMO, which is intended mainly for teenagers and will take place on the opening day of the main Prague festival program as well as on International Children's Day on 1 June in the Ponec Theatre. "This multimedia production was created as a co-production with Tanec Praha and is aimed at children ages 10 and up, which in the Czech dance scene is a relatively neglected target group," said the festival's coordinator of children's activities, Lucia Račková.
The performance is connected with a movement workshop, which schools can order in the course of the entire festival. The workshop is led by a choreographer together with artists from the production of MOMO and focuses on the topic of the flow of time and its role in our lives.
The Main Programme
The main part of the festival program will open on 1 and 2 June at Jatka78 with the choreographic duo of Linda Kapetanea (GR) and Jozef Fruček (SK) and the performance by their Rootlessroot company entitled Europium. “In this large stage composition they search in an uncompromisingly physical way for answers to the fundamental, but at the same time key question in the context of the current migrant crisis of ,What is worth living for, what is worth dying for?’ The Greco–Slovak creative due is well-known in the Czech Republic thanks to their projects for the DOT504 group, with whom they will again work later this year,” say the organisers.
The next day they will be followed by the newest solo HERO%, by Belgium-based French choreographer Karine Ponties, who is well known in the Czech Republic “for her adventurous, absurdly fantastical mixtures, searching among the endless human desire for supernatural abilities and reconciliation with one's own clumsiness,” explain the organisers.
"Karine Ponties' company Dame de Pic this year is celebrating its 20th anniversary and Tanec Praha has played an important role in its history," said Yvona Kreuzmannová. "Karine has in the past enjoyed working with Czech artists and this year decided to contact some of them. She offered them to participate in the second part of the evening, Cartes Blanches, where they can present short works specially created for this unique evening."
Anton Lachky (BE), one of the founders of Les Slovaks, invites audiences to a surreal, mystical and somewhat comical trip into the mind of a raving woman entitled Side Effects on 9 and 10 June.
Dance NEWs
Talented young choreographers present the program section Dance NEWs, formerly called the European Dance Laboratory. This year too special evenings will be devoted to them at which three short works will always be presented. On 6 and 7 June it will be young Italian dancers Francesca Foscarini (IT), who has collaborated with Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder (IL). Together they created the duet Gut Gift, “a stirring and intimate interaction between internal and external space, between the body and the mind,” say the organisers.
Last year's winner of the Best Dancer Award at the International Choreographic Festival in Seoul Heamin Jung (KR) focuses on human nature, control and the perception of women in Asia in an intimate video installation called Act%.
Dancer and theatre-maker Dan Canham (UK) uses sound recordings and memory fragments to evoke the spirit of a closed theatre that once stood at 30 Cecil Street. His other music-dance project, with which he opened the Dance Umbrella Festival in London, Of Riders & Running Horses, can be seen as part of the accompanying program.
On 13 and 14 June we can look forward to a purely Spanish evening in the Dance NEWs section. The duo of Guy Nader and Maria Campos (ES) attempt to overtake time in Time Takes the Time Time Takes and discover it in rhythmic loops, repetitions and oscillating motions. It gradually increases until the endless circle is closed, in a corporeal perpetual motion.
Carmen Fumero and Miquela Ballabriga (ES) embark on a physical conversation in the seemingly distant styles of b-boy and contemporary dance entitled ...Eran Casi Las Dos.
In the duet Outline, David Guerra (ES) “reduced the body to a spatial architectural element, which in the paired constellation is deprived of its axis and thus safe verticals. The at first glance formal geometric concept induces a profound theme of inner harmony, communion and trust,” explain the organisers.
On 16 and 17 June it's time for the award-winning study of the dark sides of the colour spectrum The Black Piece by WArd/waRD and outstanding Flemish choreographer Ann Van den Broek. “She has made a name for herself on the Dutch scene with her originality and relentless experimentation, which is why The Black Piece won the main prize at Zwaan (Swan),” say the organisers.
Tanec Praha for Students
In 2016, the Tanec Praha for Students program line will focus on choreographer William Forsythe. Another perspective on him will be offered on 20 June not only to students of arts schools, but also to the general public by the dancer Jone San Martin (DE/ES). As his long-time collaborator, she will reveal everything that you wanted to know about the secrets of post-modern choreography. At the Legítimo/Rezo evening – an lecture and solo performance – one of the greatest choreographers of our time invites you into his private life.
The next day, 21 June, Jone will talk about how Forsythe works and about his "technology" for controlling the body at a workshop and discussion for students and the general public.
The End of the Festival
The festival will conclude with a phenomenon who has moved the borders of so-called contemporary flamenco: Israel Galván. In a polyphonic communication with the voice of Inés Bacán, a cante jondo singer, the jazz piano of Sylvie Courvoisier and the rhythmically pulsing hands of José Jiménez Santiago, Israel Galván takes us on a journey through his inner universe. His inspiration was "cubist" flamenco dancer Vicente Escudero, who performed in the 1920s in Paris. Audiences will have the opportunity to get to know more about Galván also thanks to a documentary film about him that will be screened as part of the accompanying program of the festival.
VEN.ku TANCI
The accompanying program offers dance halls, workshops and films for the general public –the VEN.ku TANCI (open-air dancing) event. Each Wednesday in June during the festival there will be dances held in city squares in cooperation with the Piano in the Street initiative. "It's for fans of all dance styles," said co-artistic director of the festival Markéta Perroud. "There's going to be swing, tango and folk dance, and in the spirit of the main stars of the festival, of course also flamenco." A voice-movement workshop for seniors is also planned.
And then there is the performance of Etérea by the physically expressive Los INnatos company from Costa Rica or the dance dialogue with live music Of Riders & Running Horses by Dan Canham from Great Britain, both held in non-traditional places in the city. In cooperation with the Festival of Dance Films a screening of a documentary portrait of Israel Galván took place at the Ponec Theatre.
Tanec Praha in the regions
Tanec Praha does not end at the Prague city limits. This year it will also head to a record 16 Czech cities and towns – Brno, České Budějovice, Choceň, Hradec Králové, Jihlava, Kladruby, Nečtiny, Olomouc, Ostrava, Pardubice, Plzen, Sušice and Tábor, and newly to Liberec, Malovice and Písek. "The program will feature mainly Czech companies with international reach, but also foreign works, projects in the public space, performances for children, workshops and discussions with the performers and artists," said regional manager Veronika Hladká.
The campaign was again designed this year by Jaroslav Mašek and Helena Johnston, who also contributed to the two previous festivals. They decided to continue working with the motto "We are not liable for your imagination". "This simple motto, which they came up with last year, resonated very strongly with the artists, journalists and the general public," Yvona Kreuzmannová explained. "It was as though they had managed to sum up the essence of contemporary dance for viewers. It's not about a narrative or the 'correct interpretation', but about emotion, about having an experience. That's why we kept it this year too."
The visual form, however, underwent a change. "The central motif this year is Rorschach blots, abstract shapes used in psychology where people are asked to say what they see," Jaroslav Mašek revealed. "We work using a similar principle. Our objective was to elaborate the visual form of the campaign so that it penetrated deeper into the emotions. We made shapes out of the human bodies and what you see in them is up to you."
Tickets to all performances in Prague can be purchased at the PONEC Theatre box office or at www.tanecpraha.cz and www.gouout.cz. More information at www.tanecpraha.cz
Source: Tanec Praha
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