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October 12th, 2008
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Flash dance

A real-life couple choreographs a domestic 'comedy drama'
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
December 12th, 2007 issue

Titán

When: Dec. 14, 15 and 16 at 8
Where: Alfréd ve dvoře
Tickets: 90–150 Kč at the door

COURTESY PHOTO
Dancing in productions like this one will put hair on your chest.
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Marta Trpišovská and Michael Vodenka have been dating since they met nearly 10 years ago as students at the Duncan Centre Conservatory for dance. This Friday, they will premiere and perform an original new work about a man and woman trapped in a relationship and at odds with each others’ desires. Given this and the creators’ mutual biographies, it’s natural to ask whether the piece is autobiographical.  
“No!” Trpišovská says emphatically, adding that she and Vodenka hope audience members won’t come away with that impression.
To separate themselves from the feuding couple they’ll portray on stage, Trpišovská says she and her partner went to great lengths to create fictional characters, going so far as to the standard method acting mantra: “What’s my motivation here?”
“We worked with the characters a lot,” she says. They created a man who is a former train station employee and the stronger but “crazier” of the two. The woman is “silly, naive” and easily influenced.
The original concept of the piece was conceived a year and a half ago as an exploration of “wishing and wanting from life,” Trpišovská says. “Sometimes you’re influenced by many things, and you have to look for what you really want.”
The work that resulted after more than a year of refinement is what the duo calls a “comedy drama” of contemporary dance theater. In Titán, influences and passions are dramatized by two people living together in a small space, their boundaries confining not only their physical movement but also bringing their different, at times opposing, desires into direct conflict.
Trpišovská and Vodenka have been working and living together since graduating from the Duncan Centre, where Trpišovská still teaches. Titán is the third duet they’ve choreographed and performed, but the first in recent years (they performed their first piece together nine years ago when they were still studying at the conservatory). The partnership works on both the personal and professional level, Trpišovská  says.
“We have [a] similar kind of intuition, and sensing things, and point of view,” she explains. “It’s very helpful.”
They chose to perform in this piece, she says, for largely practical reasons. She and Vodenka know exactly what they want, so they don’t have to direct someone else; they don’t have to hire and pay performers; and perhaps most importantly, they just really enjoy being on stage.
Plus, Trpišovská adds, she can’t imagine anyone else translating their vision as well.
“For me it’s the best way,” she says. “I cannot talk about myself, but I really like Michael on the stage. He is the best for this.”
Almost all of the other people involved with Titán go back with Trpišovská and Vodenka to their days at the Duncan Centre. From the lighting designer to the live musician, these artists know each other well and draw from a local community of talent they trust — a reflection of Prague’s supportive contemporary creative scene.
“They gave me the direction to dance,” Trpišovská says of her training at the Duncan Centre.  Titán speaks to the continuing benefits of that training, both for the performers and local audiences.

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (12/12/2007):

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