Zuzana Smugalová, Dance News, 7 November 2021

Lucie Dercsényiová, art.ceskatelevize.cz, 9 November 2021

 

 

 

Miřenka Čechová (1982), a multi-talented artist – performer, choreographer, director and writer – is one of the most prominent personalities of the Czech dance and physical theatre scene. She is a co-founder and in-house director of the progressive domestic theatre groups Spitfire Company (together with Petr Boháč) and Tantehorse (together with Radim Vizváry), but she also works as an independent creator and performer. Her projects freely transcend the boundaries of established theatre forms and genres. In her work, she organically combines the word with elaborate movement expression, a solid structure with improvisation based on the present moment, and dance with pantomime. She has developed a distinctive artistic style that relies on a documentary approach and the principles of multimediality.

After graduating from the Dance Conservatory in Prague, Miřenka Čechová studied simultaneously at the Prague DAMU and HAMU academies – where she defended her dissertation in the field of directing physical and mime theatre. Since 2012, she has been irregularly teaching the course authorial creation. During her doctoral studies, she was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellowship at American University in Washington DC, where a new course in Physical Theatre was created under her auspices. As an academic, she has also lectured at other American universities, including Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania.

She has won numerous prestigious international awards for her mostly original, solo works, including the Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2012), The Best of Contemporary Dance (2012) in the Washington Post poll, and the Best Overseas Production Award at the National Arts Festival in South Africa (2013).

In 2020, Miřenka Čechová published the book Ballet Dancers, which won the Divadelní noviny award for publication and became a precursor to the theatre projects metaBallet Dancers and Ballet Dancers. Following her experimental debut Miss AmeriKa (2018), this is her second prose work, in which she draws on her own experiences and diary entries to self-ironically paint a raw, unflinching picture of her studies at the dance conservatory. She is currently working mainly in the docu-dance genre and is directing the Invisible series at her home scene with Tantehorse. The series of productions tells the story of real women artists who were forced to end their top careers for various reasons, such as Barbora Kaufmannová.

 

Barbora Vašků Kaufmannová graduated from the Dance Conservatory in Prague and in 2001 joined the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, where she worked as a ballet soloist from 2008. She also studied recreology and physical education at the University of Ostrava. Currently, she teaches at the Janáček Conservatory and as a ballet lecturer teaches courses for the public – from young children to adult students.

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photo Vojtěch Brtnický