An honest, daring and open production describing a life-altering experience which calls for human support, presence and sharing. A pressing and intimate testimony about the death of children and the complex journey to its acceptance in a performance by Markéta Vacovská, who was awarded the Dancer of 2021 for her heart-rending solo.

Vacovská’s confession, grounded in her personal experience, deeply affected me with its honesty, realness, boldness and openness. […] Separated is a strong artistic endeavour with therapeutical effect on the participants as well as the audience.

Daniela Machová, Taneční aktuality, 23 June 2020

Bereavement ranks among the most grievous experiences in human lives. All the more, if it is the loss of one’s own children. This is the core of the Separated performance which in each of its words, movements as well as inhales becomes a certain act of acceptance of this reality. Markéta Vacovská created, together with the symbiotic music accompaniment by Sára Vondrášková aka Never Sol, an exceptionally outstanding solo. Although a distinctly subjective and rather intimate statement, she also allows this delicate theme to resound through space as the shared experience of different families of different age groups and, therefore, reminds us that the socially tabooed topic of death is immediately relevant to all of us.

concept Markéta Vacovská 

premiere 15 June 2020

The performer and choreographer Markéta Vacovská (1984) studied nonverbal theatre at HAMU Academy in Prague. She has worked mainly with Spitfire Company since 2009 because she identifies with their emphasis on physical action on stage and tendencies towards experimentation with new means of expression. In cooperation with Petr Boháč and Lenka Dusilová, she created the remarkable choreography One Step Before The Fall (2013) inspired by Muhammad Ali. The production, thematising the motives of Parkinson's disease, the everlasting struggle and the borders of human abilities, earned her several awards such as Dancer of the Year at the Czech Dance Platform, the Divadelní noviny award for choreography as well as shortlisting for the prestigious Aerowaves platform. Vacovská was part of the creative team of the multi-layered trilogy Constellations (2016; 2018; 2019) accompanied by live music and thematizing relationships as the need to connect again as human beings.
In her works, Vacovská focuses mainly on the physical states of a body and their thorough exploration in time and extreme situations. Her work is always based, however, on personal experiences, and she comes to terms with her own fate through them. Just as in her newest solo performance Separated, for which she was awarded Dance of the Year 2021 by the international jury at the Czech Dance Platform.

photo Milan Štáfek