Dance Prague in the spirit of the sixties – Divadelní noviny
Theater newspaper > Criticism
Even in difficult times, this year for the thirty-fourth time, at the beginning of this summer it became our most important dance festival. It was attended by artists and ensembles from Belgium, Britain, France, Ghana, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Ten full-length works were presented, both interior and exterior performances.
The festival opened with an explosion of dance intoxication, to which the famous Belgian choreographer Ann Van den Broek seduced the dancers. The members of her Flemish-Dutch WArd//waRD ensemble threw themselves into other, however similar dance sequences again and again, not knowing when to stop. Like drunkards who throw one glass of the same wine after another, and yet always again with infinite delight. Title of the work Joy Enjoy the joy it was also a concise, obsessively repeated lyric of a song, with which they constantly encouraged themselves to dance. The uniform enthusiasm of the dancers for the uniform choreography did not subside and passed to the disarmed spectators, who had no choice but to surrender to this repetitive dance alcoholism. The magic of repetition did not fail this time either. He doesn’t fail in dance, just as he doesn’t fail in other arts that have grown in time.
Dummies of the dozen in reps
The repetitive principle in an almost defining form was presented – and the festival closed – by the Frenchwoman Maguy Marin, another choreographic superstar of this year. Here she presented one of her most radical works – Umwelt, i.e. the surrounding world, the world surrounding us, our environment. We belong to the “Umwelt” by fate, it faces us – for the worse, how else? It intimidates, clings to human beings. As if she wanted to settle things with the choreographer, including all of us; as if she wanted to hold up a mirror to our tenacity and interchangeability, our predestination, or what can I say, predictability, which we patiently fulfill as disgruntled figurants squinting for something better.
All she needed was a couple of doors and something like a shallow, transparent human aquarium, where shallow people come to show off – they come to show off their stereotypes – and at the same time they can’t retouch their banality. Maguy Marin’s troubled and aimless figures, with their limited vocabulary of movement, are the same dummies of the dozen as the bearers of choreographer Ann Van den Broek’s shrill, hoarse joy.
If we leave aside the fact that the repetitive principle belongs to the basic and most ancient griffins of creating poetic structures, to which it gives proverbial musicality, we can recall that in the culturally crucial sixties of the last century, this principle and with it quasi-mathematical procedures in general – in music, poetry, yes, even in the prose of the time (in the so-called new novel) – it comes to the fore strongly. Maguy Marin is also returning to the repetitive principle, and thus to the formative sixties for the choreographer.
In contrast to Ann Van den Broek and her outburst of exaggerated joy known as Youth, Maguy Marin represents a tired humanity that is only held up by the rutted tracks of daily and social stereotypes. The happy-as-mourning stereotype is ultimately sad news about humanity.
A repetitive stereotype of its kind was also brought about by a radical girl’s event – a trot from Vítkov to Václavák under the name City horses signed in the name of Byström Källblad from Sweden.
Dangerous solo, treacherous randomness
The loneliness of a cross-country runner is experienced by the Greek artist Anastasia Valsamaki in her own Monologue of the body, alone with their bodies in the middle of the large space of the Trade Fair Palace, a space that is still young, without wrinkles, with only a handful of memories, immature, unwelcoming, not filled with the life experiences of the performers or the fates of the visitors who have already passed and who help with their quiet whispers inscribed into the walls to decipher the body’s encrypted messages. Maybe such spaces, designed for quiet contemplative perception, the dancers who break in there, break out of meditation… and the space defends itself?
However, Anastasia Valsamaki hijacked the space and threw us hints of her messages, which we deciphered. As in the famous absurd drama Endgame, where Death comes for the king and addresses him with the words: Give me your hand, give me leg, give me belly…the dancer gave us her individual body parts, took stock of her still-living body, so that it would be delivered to eternity – and to us too – in the proper quality.
It was, of course, the kind of show you watch, but just as quickly forget. Actually, I’m not capable of being a dancer if I’m dressed. So shamefully she neglected one and wonderful possibility of complicity in the very second fact of physicality on the viewer’s impression. Why doesn’t someone explain to the young people that solo is not the easiest thing to start with, but the hardest, the hardest?
Although our talented, firmly established in all hearts and internationally traveled Viktor Černický understood this, whose artistic work he has been following with great interest since the beginning; however, he explained it in his new group work PRIMA poorly. No, in the piece… He assembled an admittedly delightful group of young dance professionals and matched them with community dancers into an authentic-looking ensemble. And then, it seems, he stepped back decently and curiously waited with folded arms to see what would happen.
Well, first of all: we are no longer in the sixties and eighties of the 20th century, when we discovered the magic of randomness in art, the thrill of improvisation and set the charm of clumsy authenticity above professional “machu”. And secondly: Viktor Černický is a talent like not many; and talent is not only a gift but also a commitment. According to centuries of experience, it is necessarily painful. Let Viktor Černický not do it – for God’s sake! – a pioneering leader! And he doesn’t make it easy! And he doesn’t shirk his duty create! On your own T-shirt.
Torn by doubts
Louise Lecavalier, the goddess, certainly has the right to the difficult solo category. She has had a great career, but from her solo Station we clearly read that even she is not yet reconciled to herself. What’s more, she is directly tossed and torn apart by her inner contradictions. In fact, she doesn’t seem an inch happier than poor Silvie (more on her in a moment). Man is a dark creature, we will never get to the bottom of his soul. Was man born to be torn apart by doubts from birth to death? So I read the joyless monologue of the Canadian choreographic goddess. After all, who wouldn’t sign him?
The performance therefore logically found its place in the festival program INSECTUM in… Prague from the author’s workshop of the Italian Silvia Gribaudi and our Tereza Ondrová. It’s a dialogue between two geographically distant girlfriends who, by a higher power, came together on a stage in Prague. Tereza, calm and sovereign, invulnerable from the place she won on the dance scene, resembles the Guide who accompanies Pilgrim Silvia through the hell of his minders and the purgatory of his desire for the stage. Pilgrim Silvie looks hopefully into the audience to see if he can receive absolution from him… And why does Silvie need absolution? Next to the tall, slim and athletic Tereza, Silvie is small and, let’s say, plump. But what’s worse, what’s worse! She is clearly in love with the stage and longs for this love to be reciprocated by its boards, but also by the – a priori ruthless – audience.
She is aware of her handicap and deals with it by masochistically exposing it; he exposes not only his imperfect physicality, but also his daring ambitions. It bases its performance on self-deprecation, and it’s already coming out. The tall, sovereign Tereza generously leaves her dance partner forbin. Hard to say if we can call it real authenticity, but trial by fire it is. Until – requestsE, big noise for Silvia Gribaudi!
An authentic picture of the time
A proper tribute was also paid to Ukraine (Focus Ukraine, concept, direction, choreography by Yana Reutova, Vladislav Detyuchenko, Nina Bulhakova and Vadim Yesaulenko). Tanec Praha thus fulfilled its civic obligations and not only provided asylum to artists from Ukraine, but also gave them the opportunity to present themselves in an open air program in the interesting new Krenovka space – a stone’s throw from Ponce.
Final open air performance Still life in Ciyou in the choreography of the German-Dutch creator Nicole Beutler, it was recorded on Vítkova hill, against the steep background of the museum building and the “no nonsense” statue of Jan Žižka. It resembled a parody of our socialist Spartakiads, and with its exaggeratedly stereotyped, repetitive movement, it shook hands with Maguya Marin’s performance.
“Under the circumstances” the management of the Tanec Praha festival reflected an authentic image of the times and also revealed certain constants of the thinking of our geographical area.
This year’s 34th year of the Tanec Praha festival took place from May 28 to June 28 in Prague and other cities of the Czech Republic.
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