A movable feast

The largest dance event of the spring offers an opportunity to see the best in Czech contemporary dance. Starting Friday, the 16th edition of Czech Dance Platform will showcase a total of 17 works performed at five different venues over five days. Culled from new creations presented over the past year, the program covers a wide range of dance/movement theater genres, and has something for every taste.

Founded to promote an art form that had been severely neglected under communism, Czech Dance Platform is a measure of how much contemporary dance has grown and flourished in the Czech Republic in a relatively short period of time. This year, it's also a measure of how much funding for the performing arts has dropped. After many years of hard work, Yvona Kreuzmannová, manager of the organizing association Tanec Praha, lost her biggest supporter, Sazka a.s., and the prestigious award that it sponsored. In the past, the winner of the Sazka Award received a 400,000 Kč cash prize to support the creation of a new work, and the opportunity to present it at Ponec.

Kreuzmannová and her partners are currently searching for a replacement. If they don't manage to find one, unfortunately the prize will not be awarded.

But the good news is that the festival itself has survived intact, with a strong schedule and interesting artists. "Despite the efflux of sponsors, and naturally the prizes offered, the choreographers and dancers still have the motivation to participate in the festival," says Kreuzmannová. "I am happy for that."

The final program was decided by an expert jury in a selection process preceding the festival. Out of 30 submitted works, 17 made the final cut. If there are prizes awarded this year, they will be announced, as usual, at the Tanec Praha festival in June.

Opening this year's festival will be VerTeDance with their dance/theater piece Emigrantes (Archa, April 16). The members of the group, which was officially established in 2004, are dancers and choreographers Veronika Kotlíková-Knytlová and Tereza Ondrová and lighting designer and technician Pavel Kotlík. They have created a number of successful projects, including Silent Talk, which won the Sazka Prize in 2005. Their new piece describes the lives of refugees as seen through the eyes of an Armenian boy.

The same night, Lenka Bartůňková, the 2008 Sazka Prize winner, will unveil her new piece titled Fish (shown on the cover), a dreamlike series of dance images (Ponec, April 16).

One of the most exciting troupes at the festival is 420 People, established by Václav Kuneš and Nataša Novotná, both of whom worked for a number of years at the prestigious Nederlands Dans Theater, cooperating with the elite of world choreography. They will be presenting a piece titled A Small Hour Ago (Archa, April 17), which first premiered in Den Hagg, Netherlands, in November 2009. It's an exceptional contemporary dance work filled with emotions. Performing with Kuneš and Novotná will be Rei Watanabe, a Japanese dancer who has worked with prestigious companies such as the Nederlands Dans Theater, Lyon Opera Ballet and Cullberg Ballet in Sweden during the past 15 years, and Cora Bos-Kroese, a Dutch freelance dancer and choreographer.  

One of Kreuzmannová's recommendations is 100 Wounded Tears, created by choreographers Jozef Fruček and Linda Kapetanea for the physical dance/theater company DOT504 (Ponec, April 19). The piece tells the story of seven characters searching for 10,000 lost dreams and one worthy sense of life, and has been enormously successful on the international dance scene. It was awarded the prestigious critics' prize, the Herald Angel Award, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009.

Other performances worth catching include a new piece designed for families, Fg = G [(m1m2)/r2] by Bára Látalová (Ponec, April 17). Dancer and choreographer Látalová, a 2007 graduate of Prague's Duncan Center Dance Conservatory, will involve spectators in the action onstage in a work inspired by the laws of physics. A strong piece titled Tore, which invokes the tense atmosphere of bullfights, will be presented by Dora Hoštová (Ponec, April 20). Hoštová, a successful dancer and choreographer, is also an alumnus of the Duncan Center, where she has been teaching since graduation in 2001.

And there's more, all at amazingly reasonable prices. Catch some of the Czech Dance Platform performances and you'll see why, funding problems notwithstanding, the festival is one of the most popular events of the year on the dance calendar.

Johana Mücková can be reached at
features@praguepost.com