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July 7th, 2008
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Dancing up a storm

On two stages this month, plenty of fancy footwork
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
February 6th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Yasunari Tamai gets a grip on things in his collaborative work with Vladimír Javorský.
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Don Quixote of Hakushu

When: Feb. 7 and 8 at 8
Where: Divadlo Archa
Tickets: 150–220 Kč, available at the venue
For more information, check www.archatheatre.cz and www.divadloponec.cz

A dearth of dance in January is giving way to a cornucopia of contemporary works in February. OK, maybe that’s not as catchy as April showers bringing May flowers, but it is definitely true this winter.
After a slow autumn of dance activity at Divadlo Archa, the theater is reviving a cross-cultural favorite, while across town Divadlo Ponec has programmed a panoply of Prague’s favorite contemporary hometown hoofers.
Don Quixote of Hakushu will take the Archa stage for the third time Feb. 7, bringing co-choreographers Yasunari Tamai and Vladimír Javorský together once again. The pair created their take on Cervantes’ windmill warrior for Archa’s 2006 festival of contemporary new wave theater after starting a collaboration at the Body Weather Farm in Japan.
The Farm, a seemingly strange place for artist interaction, is a destination created and run by Min Tanaka, a star of the Japanese dance/performance art form butoh. Butoh emerged from post-World War II Japanese reinterpretations of Western dance training, and relies heavily upon dancers’ improvisation rather than predetermined choreography.
From this unpredictability, butoh has gained a wide-ranging reputation as provocative and spiritual, yet at the same time risky and potentially violent. Perhaps the latter impressions stem from the first recognized butoh performance, in 1959, which involved the smothering of a live chicken and resulted in extensive protests.
At the Body Weather Farm, artists seeking to learn or hone butoh skills train with Tanaka while working on his farm. Javorský, an actor from Brno, first visited the farm in the 1980s, where he met and began working with Tamai.
Their collaboration resulted in Don Quixote of Hakushu, which earned a great deal of praise upon its Japanese premiere last year. It continues to play at Archa because, according to spokeswoman Pavlína Svatoňová, every performance is different. Butoh places an emphasis on drawing energy from the dancers’ surroundings and interpreting that energy as movement. So Don Quixote is in a continual state of premiere, as no two audiences — and hence, performances — are the same.
Archa offers another multicultural production with a repeat performance of Sudden Showers of Silence Feb. 13. The piece, choreographed and performed by Slovak dancer Josef Fruček and his Greek wife, Linda Kapetanea, was staged at Archa last May. Fruček has described Sudden Showers as “a 50-minute battle onstage,” a struggle between the sexes inspired by the last meeting between Hector and his wife in The Illiad.
Meanwhile, Divadlo Ponec hosts 12 different works of contemporary dance this month created and performed by Czech artists. Featured local dance companies and choreographers include NANOHACH, DNO/DAMU, Jiří Vydra and Mikoláš Holba, and Vojta Švejda and Jan Kalivoda.
Fairy tale in drops… by Lenka Tretiagová and Tereza Marečková will be performed Feb. 18 and 23. This short contemporary work is an exploration of dance as a means of self-fulfillment, and brings together professional actors and dancers with youthful spectators in an interactive performance.
Another February production worth taking in is the encore performance of Ponec’s January premiere ExitOfUs and PROPOSITION by Prague dance ensemble DOT 504, which plays Feb. 12. ExitOfUs is a reflection on life and death enacted by two dancers with a puppet, while PROPOSITION tackles the drive for dominance and the ensuing power struggle between four dancers sharing one stage.
All of which should keep contemporary dance fans happy until the weather warms. But there’s a chance that not all the performances will take place indoors.
Prior to his performance of Don Quixote at Archa last April, Tamai performed an impromptu demonstration of butoh dance outside Masarykovo nádraží. He ended up near-naked — a signature element of butoh performances — attracting the attention of passers-by. A number of them called the police and mental health professionals, so an explanation of Tamai’s behavior as art rather than insanity became necessary.
While nothing is planned yet, Svatoňová says she can’t guarantee that Tamai won’t stage another publicity stunt before the Feb. 7 performance. “If he comes with the vision that he would like to have some shocking display in public, I guess we will allow it,” she says resignedly.

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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