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December 1st, 2008
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Theater with an edge

Slovenian companies highlight this year's 4+4 festival
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 1st, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Choreographer Maja Delak takes aim at gender roles and expectations in Expensive Darlings, playing Oct. 6.
4+4 Days in Motion


When: Oct. 3-10
Where: Various venues
Tickets: 100-250 Kč, festival pass, 400-700 Kč, available at the venues
For individual events, see the Calendar listings. For a complete schedule, check www.ctyridny.cz

The first festival of the fall season for stage and dance enthusiasts also happens to be one of the best: 4+4 Days in Motion. Over eight days, venues ranging from Archa Theater and Ponec to the spanking new La Fabrika in Holešovice will serve as laboratories for some of the most experimental work being done on European stages. Most of these performances will be multimedia events, with clashes of film, movement and text. The following is a sample of what to expect this year:
Gob Squad: Gob Squad’s Kitchen: You’ve Never Had It So Good is the Anglo-German company’s reimagining of Warhol’s film Kitchen — an act made even more daring by the fact that no one in Gob Squad has actually seen the film. So this Kitchen becomes a riff on stills and on the personalities involved in the Factory film scene (especially that kohl-eyed tragic figure Edie Sedgwick). Described as a “live movie with bad coffee and nervous breakdowns,” Kitchen becomes an encapsulation of the hedonic ’60s. Archa Theater, Oct. 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m.
Irina Müller: The Berlin-based dancer-choreographer comes to Prague with a work-in-progress titled On Pleasure and Fear. Müller’s full-on movement piece explores human sensuality, pulled, as it is, between reason and instinct (the latter, naturally, stronger). Müller is very much a presence in the Berlin dance world, and it’s worth getting to know her work. Hall 30, across from Výstaviště in Holešovice, Oct. 4 at 10 p.m.
Zoja Smutný: A multinational, multimedia piece from a group made up of Czechs, Greeks, Brits, Germans and Canadians. Endings explores just what its title suggests — the inevitable, often sudden and dramatic ends of things. Intimations of doom will not be hard to discern. Five performers move before Greek-German video artist Athena Stamati’s images, in a soundscape shaped by Anglo-Greek composer Eric Samothracis. Hall 30, across from Výstaviště in Holešovice, Oct. 4 at 11 p.m.
HoME/ Howard Lotker: The Prague-based American theater artist Howard Lotker and his company (another multinational troupe) are known for their clever, semi-improvisational performances in unlikely places: private residences, tourist-trap pubs, etc. Their 4+4 venue, Hall 30, may be turned into not only a theater space for their current project, but an Orgone Accumulator as well. Little Man is a response to the story of mad, maverick psychoanalyst and Beat saint Wilhem Reich. As with all of HoME’s pieces, the audience will be very much involved in this preview performance. Hall 30, across from Výstaviště in Holešovice, Oct. 5 at 10 p.m.
Janez Janša: This year’s 4+4 festival features a number of Slovenian artists and companies — which makes sense, if you’ve been to Slovenia. Regardless of how small the republic and its population are, some of the Continent’s most exciting dance and theater are coming out of its capital, Ljubljana (not to mention philosophy, poetry and fiction, as represented by Slavoj Žižek, Aleš Debeljak and Miha Mazzini, respectively). Janša’s Miss Mobile, performed in English, brings together the interactiveness of HoME and the Warholic spirit of Gob Squad. It’s a salute to the modern right to have 15 minutes of fame, framed within a Big Brother–like structure. In other words, the topic of Miss Mobile is the vulgarity of democracy. La Fabrika, Oct. 7 at 9 p.m.
Maja Delak: Contemporary dance, founded by women, predates women’s suffrage. Another Slovenian, Maja Delak, one of the most respected contemporary choreographers in Slovenia, takes to the boards with her company of six women dancers to explore, through movement, the connection of dance and liberation. Jazz is an expression of emancipation for blacks. Movement — from Duncan to Fuller and Graham — has served the same purpose for women, as evinced in Delak’s Expensive Darlings. La Fabrika, Oct. 6 at 9 p.m.
Berlin: This Belgian company specializes in film as performance, and has been creating a series of films analyzing how people live within communities. Having already presented their documentarian looks at life in Moscow and Jerusalem, Berlin has recently focused its lenses on a small American town, Bonanza, Colorado. Billed as a “Documentary for 5 Screens,” Bonanza lays bare the isolation and mad individuality that brews underneath every nowhere American burg. Archa Theater, Oct. 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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