Lukas Blaha in Lavabo. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

article

Czech Dance Platform 2021

Read

13 min

Lukas Blaha in Lavabo. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Lena Megyeri

04 November 2021

Lena Megyeri at the bumper edition of the Tanec Praha’s Czech Dance Platform

The Czech capital is full of theatres – at least that was my feeling while walking the streets of Prague and bumping into a divadlo (theatre) at every corner. But contemporary dance has always been attracted to more unusual spaces, so during the four days of Czech Dance Platform audiences saw performances in a former military site and a swimming pool-turned-club, among many other fabulous venues.

Tanec Praha have been supporting contemporary dance in the Czech Republic for more than 30 years. One of their most important events is the annual Czech Dance Platform, a selection of about ten of the most interesting local contemporary dance works from the previous year. The festival is visited mostly by an international professional audience, and the organisers are rightly proud of the accompanying programme that includes discussions, artist talks, an award ceremony, and this year a review-writing workshop as well, in partnership with Springback Academy. Due to the pandemic, the platform was postponed from spring to autumn 2021 and presented 14 shows during an intense four-day period at the end of September.

‘Touch my wounds’… Markéta Vacovská in Separated. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Thinking back, the first thing that comes to mind is how many shows tackled dark and serious topics, such as illness and grief. Still often considered taboo in Western society, these can be risky material for artistic works too. The realisations are accordingly mixed. There’s Tumor: Carcinogenic Romance, by the artistic group named T.I.T.S. and performed by Nela H. Konetová and Jaro Viňarský, which aims to rethink our relationship with cancer but trades focus and depth for eccentricity and a long burst of ideas. There’s Effugio Volume 2 by the young crew of Dočasná Company z.s., that deals with self-loathing and self-harm, and operates with easy-to-decipher symbols and a lot of angry, urgent or even violent dancing while the performers lead us from room to room in one of Studio Alta’s unique spaces. Although often banal, the piece still touched me with its naivety and youthfully idealistic ending. And then there’s Separated by Markéta Vacovská, who won the professional jury’s award for outstanding creation and performance of this piece.

It sounds and feels more like an order than a request

Separated is Vacovská’s reflection on the loss of two of her three sons to a rare genetic disease, and as she points out in her video interview with Springback writer Emily May, it was motivated less by the therapeutic effect of talking about trauma than by the need to share it with fellow sufferers. I can imagine that those who have been affected by similar losses can indeed easily connect with the piece. But the really tricky thing – both in life and on stage – is to engage the outsider. People often feel uncomfortable or embarrassed around someone who is grieving, as they don’t know what is expected or needed from them or how best to communicate. This is reflected in a segment of Separated, where Vacovská recalls unwanted advice from friends and family on how to deal with her grief. We understand the problem but Vacovská’s alternative is also ambiguous. With a theatrical gesture she writes the words ‘touch my wounds’ on her forearm and walks into the audience. It sounds and feels more like an order than a request, and indeed, rather than letting the audience decide whether to touch her, it is she who touches and hugs some of the spectators. Many people aren’t comfortable with getting involved in a performance, especially in such a physical way, and the delicate nature of the show’s topic makes this move even more dubious. I feel that Vacovská alienates at least as many people as she wins over.

Vacovská’s performance award is also a nod to her participation in another piece: Spitfire Company’s Constellations III. My Son Looking to the Sun, choreographed and performed by Vacovská and Miřenka Čehová, with live music by Sára Vondrášková. Although there’s no doubt that Vacovská is a memorable performer, Constellations III is no less alienating than Separated, even if in a very different way. It starts like a post-show talk about a performance we have not seen, and later turns into raging absurdity, posing as experimental and brave but offering not much more than overused clichés.

Florent Golifer and robot in Ondřej Holba’s And Who Is Useless Now? Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

After so many serious issues a little fun is a welcome change, which is what choreographer Ondřej Holba’s And Who Is Useless Now? offers. Although on second thought, the question of whether we still need human artists in the age of artificial intelligence is no funny business. I’m writing this article a few days after Beethoven’s 10th symphony was ‘completed’ by AI, so Holba’s piece is more than timely. Performer Florent Golfier is partnered by four small toy-shaped robots, and an AI personified by a pleasant but cold female voice. At one point ‘she’ proudly introduces a musical piece that was composed by ‘her’ in the style of Bach, while one of the robots performs a choreography, also created by the AI. As the AI tries to prove ‘herself’ equal to humans, Golfier gets increasingly frustrated by the robots and doubts his own necessity on stage. Luckily, he’s such an engaging and witty performer that while he cites risk and common energy among other things that he is able to evoke and robots are not, he leaves us with no doubts regarding the advantages of a human artist at all. But what would famously grumpy Beethoven say about the 10th symphony?

Contemporary dance has many faces and forms, and while it’s often ground-breaking or rebellious, it comes with more traditional approaches as well – represented at CDP mostly by Michal Záhora’s two pieces, Generation X and The End’s Turnabout. The former, a solo performed by Helena Arenbergerová, is a look into the last 40 years of Czech history; the latter, a group piece, is a contemplation on Europe’s future. Both have a lot of expressive and pretty dancing (at times perhaps a little too expressive and too pretty) but lack truly challenging ideas and thoughts and could do with clearer dramaturgy as well.

Pavel Štourač’s Hic Sunt Dracones. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Pavel Štourač’s Hic Sunt Dracones is intentionally old-fashioned, and doesn’t hide it: the costumes, props and sets look like they’ve been found in some old theatre basement. Combining methods of physical theatre, dance, puppetry and object animation, the piece plays with the limits of the human body. Through optical illusions, bodies are deformed: limbs leave torsos and multiply themselves, caftans run around headless. The title – ‘here be dragons’ – refers to ancient cartographers’ belief in monsters living in the then unknown territories of the Earth – but here the unknown territory is the female soul. The witchlike whirlwind of the four women on stage make it feel like there’s much more than just four of them. This is an ancient-like tale of girlpower by a seasoned creator.

Eliška Brtnická in Hang Out. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Eliška Brtnická in Hang Out, with attendees of Czech Dance Platform. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Red and white barrier tapes became a symbol of resistance in Hungary for a few weeks last year when students of the University of Theatre and Film Arts protested against a new law and the threat to the institution’s autonomy from central government. Tapes also hung from many windows around Budapest as a sign of solidarity. Barrier tapes are important in Eliška Brtnická’s outdoor piece Hang Out as well. They have a symbolic meaning: the performer is first taped to the walls of DOX+ performance venue, but then she asks some of the spectators to cut the tapes so that we can enter an imaginary forbidden territory with her. But the remnants of the tapes that hang from her clothes have a practical function as well: as Brtnická climbs up to several high parts of the building, the flashes of red and white help us follow her route. Being a trained contemporary circus artist, whose speciality is aerial trapeze, she mostly moves on ladders and railings while she guides us to different parts of the site. All the while we wear headphones and listen to circus performers’ childhood memories of outdoor adventures, some of them hazardous. Brtnická confronts us with how safety takes the place of exploration in our lives as we grow older and as the world becomes more and more unsafe. And while we listen, she realises common dreams of entering forbidden places and defying gravity.

Cécile da Costa’s Roselyn. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Another, but very different female solo is Cécile Da Costa’s Roselyne, a piece that was also selected for the Aerowaves Twenty21. Although according to Da Costa, Roselyne’s character is based on a real-life person, she also reminds me of the many neurotic heroines of recent literature. Most of all, she reminds me of Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant, who is, by her own account, ‘completely fine’, but very obviously she’s not. And neither is Roselyne. Firstly, she hides from us: by keeping a plant in front of her face, by seeking shelter behind her neat white couch, or by covering her eyes with her arm – like a child who thinks that if they can’t see the world, the world can’t see them either. Secondly, she repeats fragments of sentences that imply a lot but tell little. ‘I feel guilty, but I can’t remember why’ is one that comes up frequently. Her speech is compulsive, but her actions are even more so: she constantly adjusts her outfit (decent dress and heels) and moves to the strange rhythm of her own voice. She is unable to face us or connect to the outside world. But just as for Eleanor Oliphant, with time the gradual opening up also takes place for Roselyne – the tension and obsession of her movement releases, and she’s finally able to literally and figuratively open her eyes and face the outside world. It’s a shame that this second part of the piece becomes a bit sentimental.

OCD behaviour is also present in Jana Stárková’s, Lukas Blaha’s and Ondřej Menoušek’s Lavabo, a show that turns everyday rituals of hygiene and cleaning into stunts. Performed by Blaha, the piece aims to eliminate showiness from contemporary circus and present its possibilities in the most everyday of settings. Every simple action becomes a game for Blaha, and at the same time everything feels to have a stake as well. After mopping the floor, he spills the dirty water into bowls that he balances on his forehead; later he juggles with the bowls. At other times he plays with towels or climbs the tiled walls of the former swimming pool where the performance takes place. Although the circus stunts don’t feel showy, the piece still falls into the trap of self-indulgence at times.

And if we’re tired of solos, then there’s Duets by Tereza Ondrová, Petra Tejnorová and their group, Temporary Collective. After Ondrová’s short introduction, she invites someone on stage to complete a small task with her. At first we think it’s now our turn to become performers, but soon it turns out that there are moles among us: pre-selected civilians who are waiting to perform – in pairs – the little tasks that await them. These include looking into each other’s eyes ‘until the moment is complete’, exploring each other’s faces with their hands, singing a favourite song into a chosen body part of the other person, and dancing together to a party song. Since the concept is not really new, I’m sure that Duets remind many people of many past experiences (team-building games, for example), whether as spectators or participants. In my role of spectator, I was mostly reminded of Jerôme Bel’s many shows including civilians and disabled persons, and even more of Marina Abramović’s legendary 2010 performance The Artist Is Present. But while in Abramović’s case, each meeting and each connection was spontaneous, new, and therefore full of possibilities and uncertainties, Temporary Collective’s performers are trained and their actions rehearsed, and this is where the magic gets lost for me. Here, our position as spectator is not challenged, the frame of the game doesn’t contain any risks, and the concept becomes increasingly tiresome.

Johana Pocková, Sabina Bočková and Inga Zotova-Mikshin, Treatment of Remembering. Photo © Vojtěch Brtnický

Two of the most unambiguously liked pieces of the festival were created by the same pair of artists: Johana Pocková and Sabina Bočková of Pocketart. Their success proves to me that audiences are still not tired of clever, thoughtful and well-structured pieces – and it doesn’t hurt if there’s a bit of quality dance involved either. And while the appreciation is official in the case of Treatment of Remembering (it won both the jury award and the audience award), I can only cite the excitement of my fellow spectators in the case of The Lion’s Den to prove its popularity. The show, also selected for Aerowaves Twenty21, draws on popular formats of the entertainment industry and mass media, such as commercials, TV shows and political speeches as a starting point for its movement material. Sporting masculine suits and hairstyles, standing at two sides of the stage and facing the audience, the dancers start with a choreography that is loaded with prompting movements. Every move is calculated and precise, even the facial expressions of the two performers are in perfect unison. Later they breathe and sing into megaphones and then perform a witty duet where they are tangled up to the point where they look like Siamese twins. They finish with a slow-motion scene full of pathos: no emotion, no gesture is sincere here, everything is meant for effect – just like on our various screens.

Treatment of Remembering (created by Inga Zotova-Mikshina alongside Pocková and Bočková) is sometimes performed outside in nature, but this time we experienced it in Tanec Praha’s dance venue and CDP’s festival centre, Ponec. According to the concept, the three performers undergo the ‘treatment of remembering’ procedure with the audience at a time when nature, consumed by humanity, no longer exists. The show starts with a peaceful picture of the three performers resting on a giant white sofa, and it continues in equally calming manner: they move around in a slow flow, to a meditative score that often recalls nature. The bright but pleasant colours of the lights strengthen the feeling that we are somewhere outside time and space. Later, spoken text gives us and the performers some instructions that resemble visualisation exercises or meditative practices, the most important being ‘imagine yourself breathing’. Although it suggests a dystopic world, Treatment of Remembering is not unsettling; rather, it has a dreamlike, foggy quality – just like memories often do. As the closing piece of the festival, it was the perfect way to end this marathon-like Czech dance adventure. ●

Prague, Czech Republic

More info: tanecniplatforma.cz/en/platform-2021

Springback Members can watch full-length performance videos of the Czech Dance Platform entries by Cécile da Costa and Johana Pocková/Sabina Bočková (Pocketart:
Cécile da Costa: Roselyne
Pocketart: The Lion’s Den

See below for video interviews with the artists at Czech Dance Platform by Springback writers Ka Bradley, Charles A. Catherine, Beatrix Joyce and Emily May.

Czech Dance Platform 2021

Side Step Helsinki: norm-breaking – outsourced?

Rose and Bloom international dance prizes

Everybody Festival: inclusion as genuine shift or selling point?

Harald Beharie: the present body