NEWS

We are happy to announce that Miřenka Čechová, a fearless experimenter, a personality of contemporary dance and physical theatre, returns to Flora. The versatile artist's distinctive style is based on a documentary approach and the principles of multimediality. Both of her titles from the 26DF programme – Ballet Dancers and Invisible II / Barbora Kaufmannová – are permeated by the theme of bodyshaming and its pathological effect on the human psyche…

In Ballet Dancers, the dancer resists this „form of humiliation and criticism of the individual because of his physical aspects“ with black humour and her own nudity. She literally exposes the problem of dogmatic ballet training. Inspired by her own experience as a girl, Čechová presents the harsh practices used in the study of classical dance: the physically and psychologically demanding, painful, personality-degrading life of child ballet trainees at the conservatory as she herself experienced it.

Unlike Čechová, who left ballet to pursue contemporary dance, her conservatory classmate Barbora Kaufmannová persevered through the drill and worked her way up to prima ballerina. Then the end came. Čechová transformed her story into a docu-dance performance Invisible II. This is the second part of her series about women artists who were forced to end their top careers for various reasons, like the actress Hana Frejková in the first part (Invisible I / Hannah, 2020).

Kaufmannová shares with the audience not only her life dedicated to classical dance, but also the generally concealed and often shocking facts of the professional ballet scene that have long since acquired the status of normality.

Nowadays, the globally established and widely used genre of artistic docu-dance gives a glimpse behind the curtain of the actual dance event directly into the real, often autobiographical world of the performers. The most prominent representatives of the genre are the French choreographer Jérôme Bel, Véronique Doisneau, a prominent dancer in the Paris Opera Company, Pichet Klunchun, a world-renowned representative of traditional Thai dance, and Cédric Andrieux, a unique dancer in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Miřenka Čechová has been working in this genre for a long time and is de facto its pioneer on the domestic dance scene.

The transgenerational immersive performance Figuring Age, in which the choreographer Boglárka Börcsök makes the stories of forgotten and now deceased female artists who contributed to the development of modern dance in Hungary theatrically present, also undoubtedly has a documentary dimension.

(to be continued / first part here)

 

on the 26 Flora programme (click for tickets):

Sat 13 May at 6 pm | Moravské divadlo
Miřenka Čechová & Spitfire Company BALLET DANCERS

Sun 14 May at 4 pm | S-club
Miřenka Čechová & Tantehorse INVISIBLE II. / BARBORA KAUFMANNOVÁ 

Sun 14 May at 9 pm | S-club
Miřenka Čechová & Tantehorse INVISIBLE II. / BARBORA KAUFMANNOVÁ

Mon 15 May at 10.00 | festival tent (free entry)
DISCUSSION WITH MIŘENKA ČECHOVÁ

 

photo Vojtěch Brtnický / Jan Hromádko / Tantehorse