Networking meeting and discussion about the touring possibilities of dance pieces across the regions of Slovakia, closer cooperation and possible partnerships between dance creators and venues as well as independent centres across Slovakia. It will consist of short and longer pitching sessions as well as a moderated discussion on current challenges in programming contemporary dance works.
Hosted by Maja Hriešik (Telocvičňa, Plast) and Michal Klembara (Antena Network)
During the creation process of this choreography I continued the development of my own dance methodology through movement research. This methodology is focused on using a body scanning practice which helps me connect with the subconscious parts of myself. After reaching this state, I generate the movement material which is later needed for the composition. My first intention when I decided to create this choreography was to connect with my essential movement, a movement of purity, which would not only empower myself but also the space around me. This idea emerged just after graduating from a choreography programme as I felt the studies blocked the flow of my essential movement. At the same time I needed to reconnect with my body after a severe sickness. Perhaps this empowerment I was searching for at that time and for which a deep truthful connection with the body is necessary also leads to the primordial and beyond-self movements which are part of my research. Additionally, in some moments of this choreography, you can also see me performing movements which I perceive as learned or expected from the dancer to perform and are not coming from my essential movement language vocabulary. Personally, these movements are creating for me a contrast to my essential movement and help me create an inner emotional narrative. For the creation of the text, I used the automatic writing method. The outcome of this writing was not only text but also the discovery of a certain specific (essential?) rhythm which can be found both in text and in my dance.
“In the solo piece Essence, Eva Urbanová confirms that she is a mature dancer despite her young age. Her movement is straightforward, revealing to us her feelings, emotions and thoughts. She is fragile and strong at the same time. Simply, through physical expression, spontaneously, she is able to express, what is inner. Through a kind of movement ritual, she searches for traces of the essence of herself, of her own or human essence. The two awards she has received abroad for this solo are only a natural assessment of her qualities, both interpretive and creative.”
(Miroslava Kovářová)
Choreography, dance: Eva Urbanová
Text: Eva Urbanová
Music: Aid Kid
Impossibility to go out, to the theater, to meet the audience, colleagues or family. In the spring of 2020, social networks were flooded with videos that testify to the desire of artists to dance and stay in touch, stay visible. Choreographer Ceren Oran chose several of them as inspiration for her latest project, which she deliberately placed in a public space. The Urge draws inspiration from the frustrating experience of two years of pandemic and isolation, but transforms it together with the dancers into something highly vital, contagious in the best sense of the word, in the sharing of joy, energy, fascination of the moving body, in the intense sharing of the moment here and now in direct contact with the viewer in a public space. Collective trauma and an individual’s individual reaction to a social crisis Oran transforms into choreographic images that combine energetic, synchronous dance passages with individual dancers’ improvised solos. Pulsating electronic music determines the dynamics and changing rhythm of the choreography, the energy of which urgently and uncontrollably spreads directly to the audience. The musical component is complemented by live improvisation of the saxophonist, which increases the tension between the dancers – the crowd and the individual – the musician.
Concept, choreography: Ceren Oran
Choreographic cooperation: Maayan Reiter, Rotem Weismann
Dramaturgical cooperation: Karolína Hejnová
Project initiated by: Ceren Oran & Moving Borders, MOVE Ostrava and Tanečno
Dance: Miriam Budzáková, Matúš Szeghö, Paulína Šmatláková, Andrej Štepita, Lukáš Záhorák
Music: Hüseyin Evirgen
Live music: Lenka Molčányiová
* free entry
01. Do you see that bridge?
010. Do you see that wooden bridge?
0101. You see the wooden bridge but you don’t see the stone bridge.
0. What is the stone bridge?
010101. It’s one that let donkeys cross, let horses cross.
He /DAMA DAMA/
Origin: Púchov forests
Age: 49
Height: 185 cm
Weight: 75 kg
She /LYNX LYNX/
Origin: Slatinské lazy
Age: 60
Height: 163 cm
Weight: 55 kg
A dance duet of maturity on the verge of rottenness, at the meeting point of contemporary dance and physical theatre, depicts the genesis of one master – from admiration and enchantment to asymmetry and disgust. In the beginning there was attraction, instinct, which after a while was replaced by the predominance of the strength and power of the body. Hierarchy.
“The performance matter uses parody as its backdrop in order to give way the feelings of the approaching retirement age of dance performers. At the same time, it thematizes the state of our society, the position and relevance of dance, dancers and choreographers. The balanced acting and movement vocabulary of experienced performers allows them to approach heavy issues with lightness, playfully make themselves the objects of the humour. The piece, based on the lives of the creators, which has proven to be appealing to a wider spectrum of audiences, not only the dance one was. It was directed by Martin Hodoň, known for numerous collaborations with the dancers and for combining the movement with text, with a strong contribution of the dramaturg and in this case also the surprisingly mature performer Dáša Čiripová. The piece, promises an exceptional experience and the opportunity of much-needed (self)reflection.”
(Petra Fornayová)
Director: Martin Hodoň
Dramaturgy: Dáša Čiripová
Choreography: RASEMA
Sound design: Dominik Suchý
Light design/set/costume: matoha
Technical support: Lukáš Kubičina
Dance/performance: Anna Sedlačková, Dáša Čiripová, Daniel Raček
Production: GAFFA co-produced by KC P*AKT
Co-production: Neskorý zber
Thanks to: CO.Labs Brno
Supported by: Slovak Arts Council
When animals are deprived of their natural environment, locked in inappropriate spaces, in a ZOO, circus, or laboratory, they tend to develop abnormal repetitive behaviors. Picking at nothing, floating limbs, head banging, head waving, pacing, or dancing are the names that scientists have given to the stereotypical movements of animals in captivity. In her new creation, Jana Tereková creates weird, possessed, alienated, troubled and troubling bodies which are able to turn into calm bodies instantly, stretching out time, doing nothing or too less, carrying out rituals without apparent sense, inefficient and unnecessary. They draw the spectator into a strange universe that fascinates, hypnotizes, where time seems suspended. The beings on the stage are distant yet intimately familiar. They are animals, imaginary creatures, objects, humans. The work can be received as an ironic and bitter action in the face of general inaction, ignorance and arrogance. And as a praise of long time and boredom, creating a counterweight to the world obsessed with utility and efficiency that has reduced nature and non human animals in consumer goods.
“In her works, choreographer and dancer Jana Tereková systematically exploresthe dancing body, the limits of dance, movement structures. Dancers are provoked to work against their emblematic movement, thus she eagerly revises the dance vocabulary and incites a discussion on the development and character of dance with her creations. By focusing on artistic research and reflecting merely scientific subjects, she is quite unique in the context of the Slovak dance scene. Her most recent work Abnormal Repetitive Behaviour, is a beautiful example of this – the starting point for new dance material is the movement of animals held in long-term captivity.”
(Michaela Pašteková)
Choreography: Jana Tereková
Dance and creation: Edita Antalová, Daniel Raček, Jana Tereková
Sound design, music: Joseph Champagnon
Costumes: Gabriela Čechová
Lights: Jozef Miklós
Meeting spot: A4 – Space for Contemporary Culture
Guided by the artists and hosted by the city forests of Bratislava just 15 mins away from the main venue.
Take a deeper breath, stretch your legs and thoughts slightly further.
This physical theatre performance is a reflection upon the structural system orientated in one main direction in which we people live in. It points out their paradoxic morals, their power games and the loss of orientation once there is no structure any more.
Ingredients:
– 4 performers
– 35 squares
– 1 Eva
– 1 Dorota
– a composition
– little red riding hood
– a bit of salsa
– hierarchy
– left and right
– something special
– the meaning of life
“YOLT combines two principles, two worlds. The world of rationality and the world of intuition, basic instincts. Drawing from fairy tales, they deconstruct stories and reflect on their moral messages. Using movement and text, they play with the concepts of good and evil, structures of power and the pleasures we are constantly seeking. The production presents dance and acting talents of four young and talented performers, attuned to the poetics of of the experienced Italian director and choreographer Manuel Ronda.”
(Eva Gajdošová)
Choreography and direction: Manuel Ronda
Performance: Miriam Budzáková, Silvia Sviteková, Matúš Szeghö, Andrej Štepita
Music: Eva Sajanová
Lights, stage, costumes: Dorota Volfová
Illustrations: Manuel Ronda
Visual: Matúš Szeghö
Production: Tanečno o.z.
A curated audio guide through Slovak contemporary dancescape making the bus journey more pleasant. A talk between two friends, Jaro and Maja, a dancer constantly leaving but never truly gone from Slovakia and a naturalized dance dramaturg and activist, who despite her burning out for Slovak dance fosters her foreigner’s eyes. Navigating around the experience of a dance career stretched between East, Middle and West of Slovakia and further away, talking about how it was, which promises have crumbled and what seems promising in the future.
Is free will real, or is it just an illusion created by chance in the course of human evolution? Is the human race doomed? Are we cursed or blessed by the illusion of our own ego? These are the questions László Fülöp’s choreography seeks to answer in the dance performance At the horizon of no return. The work created for the dance company of Divadlo Štúdio tanca deeply contemplates and reects the situation and condition in which civilization, the Earth, the Universe currently nds itself. As a starting point for his reection he takes the observation of the body, which consciously or unconsciously reacts to given events.
“On the Horizon of No Return is the result of the vision of the new leadership of Divadlo Štúdio tanca, an established Slovak dance company, to create dance works as reflections of current life. Exploring the forms of human behaviour, the possibility of their communication, the creative team comes with a sincere enquiry into the future of our civilization. Dancers with different backgrounds, experiences and physicality are united by a new and convincing quality of interpretation.”
(Eva Gajdošová)
Choreography: László Fülöp
Music: Vince Varga
Dramaturgy assistant: Zebastián Méndez Marín
Light design: Ján Čief
Scenography and costumes: Ivana Macková
Dance performance CHARON pictures a relationship between a ferryman Charon and a soul, representing an entity of a universal human being. The character of Charon has been chosen as a personification of human qualities in their self-reflection, while the soul represents a human on her way of transformation and knowledge through a journey into and from the underworld. According to different philosophy questions, the soul is searching for its place not only in our known world, but also in worlds that are distant to us and therefore often obscure to us. Thanks to its companion, Charon, the soul becomes aware and transforms into a purer form. Its journey and knowledge become a mirror of us all, of our deeds. Mythology, as a collection of stories created to explain the ambient world, is the source of timeless learning, pointing at the immutable substance of a human soul regardless the development of human civilizations over thousands of years. Authors also try to ask the audience some provocative questions about who can be a hero in contemporary world, how to become such a hero, what journey needs to be undertaken and what form will the myth of our future have.
“Greek mythology is not an obvious source material for Slovak contemporary dance creators, but Charon proves that even today it is possible to contemplate eternal, archetypal questions such as death, transformation of existence into another form, the search for the meaning and essence of life in a qualitative and ever new way. The performance is exceptional also because of its excellent dancers Rado Piovarči and Paulina Šmatláková and the dramaturgical input of Alexandra Rychtarčíková, who is well versed in the culture of ancient Greece.”
(Petra Fornayová)
Choreography, concept and performer: Radoslav Piovarči
Co-creator and performer: Paulína Šmatláková
Music and performer: Michal Paľko
Lighting design: Ján Čief
Costumes: Martin Kotúček
Dramaturgy and professional consultation: Alexandra Rychtarčíková
Arrival around midnight.
International networking event with brunch which includes pitching sessions, informal discussions and presentations.
Soft Spot is an experimental physical performance born out of cooperation between dancers Martina Hajdyla, Soňa Ferienčíková and choreographer Adrienn Hód. Through improvisation and a research of the physical body, they explored the relationship between body, personality and meaning. What do we perceive when we look at the human body? What does the face, the gesture, the posture, the movement tell us? How do we communicate through the body with others? Soft Spot plays with the blurring of human qualities, asks what defines us as humans, and looks for a hidden, sensitive “soft spot” in ourselves.
“Soft Spot is an experimental study that challenges established ways of interpretation and deconstructs traditional movement conventions. It forces the audience to transcend the rational mode of thinking, granting them freedom of movement. In the work of established choreographer Adrienn Hód the extraordinary physical performance of performers Martina Hajdyla and Sonia Ferienčíková is simply stunning. Reduced to mere bodies without facial expression, they explore the subtlety and complexity of meanings inscribed in corporeality. Powerful piece that has received admiring reviews on several dance platforms and festivals.”
(Michaela Pašteková)
Choreography: Adrienn Hód
Created and performed by: Martina Hajdyla, Sonia Ferienčíková
Music: Ábris Gryllus
Dramaturgy: Ármin Szabó-Székely
Movement collaboration: Márcio Kerber Canabarro
Visual collaboration: Mária Júdová
Costume designer: Lucia Škandíková
Lighting designer: Tomáš Morávek
Technical support: Daniel Kozlík
PR: Alice Krajčírová
Graphic designer: Yara Abu Aataya
Production: Lucia Šimášková / BOD.Yngo, Jiří Hajdyla / ME-SA
Executive production: Romana Packová
Co-production: ME-SA, BOD.Yngo, HODWORKS Tanec Praha z.ú. / PONEC – dance theatre, Platform for Contemporary Dance, Bratislava in Motion Association
Supported by: the Art Support Fund, the International Visegrad Fund, the Prague City Hall, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the State Fund for Culture of the Czech Republic
Special thanks to: Csaba Molnár, Adam Czirák, Dano Raček, Petr Soukup, Mia Majeríková, Maker Keveš, Márk D. Molnár, Soňa Kúdeľová, Viera Farbiaková, Petr Goro Horký, Jenda Niesit, Mariana Novotná, Michal Šimečka, Agi Ferienčíková, Tatiana Lacová, Karol Laco, Lenka Sedláčková, Aneta Jiroušková, Adéla Jiroušková, Gideon Horváth
“Custom view”, an assisted solo by Tomáš Danielis and Marek Godovic, is a contemplation of how people make decisions and look at the world through the prism of Danielis’ own life. By questioning interpretations of reality, issues of freedom, perception of relationships, and even basic human behaviour itself in (not so) different cultures this work poetically examines the society in which we live together. Based on Danielis’ life and career as a pretext and life Godovič’s dramaturgy presents a mixture of different dance languages and virtuosity squared off by sociology and Wittgenstein’s philosophy on stage.
“Custom View is an honest statement and summing-up of a mature dancer and choreographer Tomáš Danielis, who has worked for more than twenty years in diverse artistic and cultural environments. This gives him a mandate to compare and evaluate, yet he goes beyond mere naming of the positives and negatives. Danielis’ performance offers us, through the balanced presence of text and movement, a glimpse into the intimate space of his own work and life, at times indulgent, at others dramatically precise and ironic. He contextualizes the vocation of the artist in our society, raising many fundamental questions about the meaning and necessity of art itself.”
(Petra Fornayová)
Performing: Tomáš Danielis, Marek Godovič
Dance, text, light design: Tomáš Danielis
Life dramaturgy, text, stage manipulation: Marek Godovič
Music: Vladimír Godár, Anthony Rouchier, Ľubomír Panák, Gioachino Rossini, David Bowie, Pat Metheny
Assitent: Soňa Kúdeľová
Graphic design: Matej Lacko
Production: Biela Noc / White Nights, Zuzana Pacakova, Veronika Malgot
Sapiens Territory is a performance for seven dancers which came out of a long-term international collaborative research.
Where does the body end and the behavioral patterns begin into which we try to fit our bodies day after day? Is it at all possible to distinguish between them or have they grown into a single inseparable entity after all those years, a little like a broken leg into plaster? In this piece, Yuri Korec explores the violence we inflict on ourselves to mask who we really are. But also the violence that protects us from ourselves and our surroundings, scrutinizing us almost all the time. He subjects it to a thorough repeated re-examination with a group of dancers. It will become clear very soon that, more than being shaped by the frameworks, we are shaped by how we define ourselves towards them. Sapiens Territory notices moments when the body suddenly betrays us in contact with them, dismisses obedience, does not cooperate. It will be only then, if we can be ourselves at all.
Concept, Choreography: Yuri Korec
Choreography, performance: Silvia Bakočková, Jakub Cerulík, Jakob Jautz, Anja Naňová, Silvia Sviteková, Alica Šaling, Michal Toman
Dramaturgy: Ivana Rumanová
Scenography, Light Design: Matúš Ďuran, Tomáš Hubinský
Music: Matúš Bolka
Production: Skrzprst
* limited capacity
** free entry for registered participants of Slovak Dance Platform // for other participants the entry is possible after purchasing a ticket for BRaK festival (on this link) and booking a place (on this link)
“Don’t interrupt your thoughts with words. Come in and sit in silence.”
Imagine a (peculiar) movement, mind and body, as objects of observation and bending… Can you hear it?
“This process vs. art work or product, is my resonating body and my dancing mind. Flushes of resonances in different parts of the apartment, as a long-term ritual performative experiment, help me capture the intersections between myself as a dancer and myself as a person. Throughout the year, I obsessively research and analyze the rhizomatic firing of impulses that my mind produces. And the body survives.”
Autonomy is a process. And it is an art work about creating art works. It is one’s own therapy, it is learning and accepting one’s own autonomy.
The project was supported from public funds by the Art Support Fund The project partner is the Bratislava self-governing region.
“In recent years, Soňa Kúdeľová has taken an interest in exploring the creative overlaps of dance, visual and musical arts. Sound, voice, visual and physical body meet in Autonomy and intersect in space. The viewer has the opportunity to connect to any of the strands. He can freely observe, actively perceive the messages, or just be carried away by the images. Autonomy is the punctuation and culmination of complex author’s AUTO trilogy, and with it her voice has undoubtedly become an autonomous on the local scene.”
(Miroslava Kovářová)
Choreography and dance: Soňa Kúdeľová
Music and visual design: Boris Vitázek
Dramaturgy: Soňa Kúdeľová, Boris Vitázek
Dramaturgy of the text: Zuzana Husárová
Lighting design and tech. support: Dominik Novák, Peter Dolog
Costume: People on Earth
Production: oz CHAOSMOS
Closing discussion and dialogue about the artworks with the members of Dramaturgical Board, dance critics and artists facilitated by a dramaturg Yasen Vasilev.