Archive

Closing discussion and dialogue about the artworks with the members of Dramaturgical Board, dance critics and artists facilitated by a dramaturg Yasen Vasilev.

“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)

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.

“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)

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)

International networking event with brunch which includes pitching sessions, informal discussions and presentations.

Arrival around midnight.

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)

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)

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. 

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)

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. 

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

Sessions of Touch is a specific participatory experiential 1 : 1 format for an encounter between one dancer and one spectator. This format is based on creation principles of a performance entitled Diaries of Touch. It serves for exchange of one’s own physical experience. It is a hand offered to share the unique stories of our bodies, and it deals with touch as the basic way in which we directly relate to the world and our immediate surroundings. Sessions of touch will be led by creators and dancers of the performance: Lukáš Bobalik, Viktor Černický, Barbora Janáková, Tomáš Janypka, Jazmína Piktorová, Eva Priečková, Sonja Pregrad, Silvia Sviteková, Andrej Štepita, Dana Tomečková.

Limited capacity, only registered platform participants can book this event.

Make a reservation at guests@danceplatform.sk / limited capacity.

The final discussion of the first Slovak dance platform with Slovak and international guests. We will explore the variability of voices on the Slovak scene, the architecture of relationships and their specifics. We will try to bring the atmosphere from the venue into the online space. A format combining live and zoom formats, questions by the audience are welcome. 

The Man Without Qualities is an ironic and disillusioned panorama of the modern society and its way of thinking.

It is inspired by the novel of the same name by the Austrian writer Robert Musil, which is considered to be an essential work of the last century literature. It is known for a unique usage of irony, sarcasm and it mixes disdain with admiration for the end of something, that iniciates the start of something new.

The world in which the individual characters move in the piece, is a colourful caleidoscope. The characters cannot keep their identities and fail to finish their actions – the fragment rules over the whole. There is hardly any literarary plot, the protagonists act rather than think. They have some kind of a fictitious form, they seem to be moving behind a dark plane, emerge before they start to act and disappear when we forget about them.

Two beings. Two energies. Two opposites. The tension between them shifts the distance. Relationship in the infinite oscillation of reflection and rest. Who is who? Is it important?

The basic idea of the choreography was to look for possibilities how to grasp, with minimal means of expression, the existential question of tension, which is the essence of life. A tension that vibrates and oscillates, that is sometimes invisible and sometimes so evident that it obscures everything else. The existence of tension presupposes the existence of opposites – their examination was the second idea of choreography. The circle is the final idea of the choreography. Its qualities such as secretiveness, autonomy and symmetry nourished the work. The use of masks originally had only one goal – to draw attention to the body, but perhaps it creates the opposite tension. Finally, it also refers to our current experience.

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.

NO ON is an organic creative process. It is a performative concert, dance without choreography, music without a score. It exists in the dedicated space and time, selflessly offering a spectrum of images, tones, movements, light steps, emotions and inspirations.

Present in the space are the spectators and objects of different shapes and functions. And the performers, who are the energetic conductors connecting everything. The spectators arrive, choose a spot, sit down and the objects begin to resonate with their movements and feelings. Everything in the space is washed over by music and movement. Though this fluidity can perhaps not be perceived with a naked eye, it can surely be exploding within us. The role of „the energetic conductors“ is to let all these vibrations pass through them, resonating. If they feel a potential in the established resonance, they navigate or transform, dive deep into their own fantasy and through this create a tangible matter in the space. This matter that is in reality born from the togetherness in the room.

Our Velvet  Revolution was a turning point for most of us. Manifest of Possibilities does not want to be an objective  enumeration of events. It is a manifesto of different perspectives from which we can look at the revolution and at the times coming after. 

“…One of the most important values of the revolution was the feeling of solidarity. Key values included humanity, human dignity … today we have to ask to what extent reform post-revolutionary laws have in mind these values. (…) Another central value of the revolution was freedom. However, the ethical anchorage of freedom and social dimension has largely disappeared in the post-revolutionary era of transformation.”(Philipp Ther: New Order of the Old Continent_ The story of neoliberal Europe)

What is one’s relationship to his or her own yearning and options? What is stopping us from decision making and responsibility taking? What or who is a driver of our decisions? 

The process of desire’s arising is comprehensive. It includes psychological, social, cultural, religious, and other influences. Yearning, for a healthy individual, is an integral part of values such as freedom, will, truth, and change. Our intention was to reveal a state when we are mindful of our yearnings, what are our innermost desires, how to manifest them at individual or collective level. But, at the same time, we do not cling to them as if they were the only important in our life. They are just present, we share them sensitively and I assist others on their way to their own yearning. This is the state we call free efforts or effortless being. 

3×20 manifests the energy and message of three women – choreographers. Each of them reflects the problems of today through her own eyes, inspired by her background, her own hopes and fears. The topics are diverse: movement (in)ability of today´s people vs the more sacred view on movement of the ancient world (Squat), mass paralysis of values in times of political-mafia manipulation (Čin) and the searching for the harmony of micro- and macrocosm within a human being (Spaces). Strong emotions, technically acomplished  contemporary dance and varied aesthetics guarantee a complex and unique experience.

“This is my head and I will separate it from the body so that I can say there is my head.” (J. Juhás)

We started off with little dances with John Zorn and Keiji Haino in 2014. We threw cabbage heads into the corner of the stage. Later we met to dance this time with girls – outsiders, weirdos, girls who wear aluminium hats, girls uttering long tones and winning beauty contests whispering that we failed because of an intellectual error. We are inserting our fingers into the folds of a slightly torn hoodie. Moon cup on the floor has been chewed into pieces by the cat. The head is still rolling around in the corner. Bloody moments. This is becoming very personal. The sperm tastes best after eating a pineapple, whereas the crisps taste best while having a period. We have failed. Bloody moments.

POINT OF ASSEMBLAGE is an interdisciplinary stage piece connecting dance, live music, visual art, light design and the architecture of a post-industrial space. The production is a collaboration of seven artists from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Norway.

POINT OF ASSEMBLAGE represents a “New Temple“ in times of a contemporary human. It invites the spectator in and proposes a Journey – an act of ´passing through´ the border between everyday life and the sacred, dreamed World. The performance articulates a search for deeper Knowing. It is a non-linear story, that reenacts prayer as a ritual of deep listening and connection.

What is important is to allow the Point of assemblage to move. This movement is supported by light and the scope of our imagination, which creates the connection between the internal and the external, between the beginning and the moment of disappearance. Nothing is permanent.

Touch is our primary sense. Touch is dangerous. Touch is what is at stake today.

When creating this piece, the performers kept diaries of touches for 9 months (even during the pandemic). In language, there are only few words for describing touch and even less for describing the experience of being touched, so they invented ways to describe and move our experiences.

Instead of just watching the image, you can allow yourself to be affected viscerally and to stay for a while with this way of engagement with your surrounding.
Imagine a group of youngsters in a sports hall, dressed uniform-like. A sports hall is a place of discipline. Discipline creates beautiful shapes. What if in our primary schools we practiced the discipline of sensitivity? They are close to each other, but not yet touching. They are to build together something yet unseen. They are singing an ode to softness.

Dance performer Lukáš Zahy will be looking for truth. 

In the streets of Bratislava city you are welcome to see a performance. It is a part of artistic research with topic a truth. Lukáš Zahy choosed this topic because he has a strong insterest of human authenticity, discovering art possibilities and lifetime learning. During his artistic research he was asking these questions: What is truth? Does it exist? It can be subjective and objective in the same time? How it works? How it influence civilization understanding of this word? How it is manifesting in movement?

Last year was extremely difficult for the entire artistic community. Since the platform was scheduled for November and the selected works reflect the past two seasons, we will try to find questions and answers to what the year with Covid has taught us, where the dance scene has moved and what it has managed to produce. We will explore which new formats of dance presentation have turned out to be attractive for the creators, and for the audiences, what the new technologies have taught us and what other ways artists have used to communicate with their audiences. We will look at personal experiences of artists, what the quarantine has revealed to them about themselves. 

At the beginning of a theatrical-dance performance stands the word „repast“. The seemingly archaic word speaks of spiritual repast in contrast to the natural,  necessary nourishment.The author’s testimony about our everyday life, coexistence, constant movement of thoughts and unpredictable emotions.

The dance duet by Nikoleta Rafaelisová and Daniel Raček is an anticipation of the end. On the background of J. L. Borges´ texts the piece examines the overlap of conciousness and unconciousness and their influence on shaping reality.
Time as a catalyst of cortex and a next wasted chance to remember my own life. I will die and I won’t even remember.

Autocorrect is a solo dance performance that draws inspiration from the algorithm of automatic text correction as well as the consequences of its use and operating in everyday life. In the game of multitasking, where autocorrect is an instrument of identity, we observe the uncontrolled and, conversely, controlled body of the performer on the border between the creative process and everyday life.

„What is world, baby don’t hurt me?! (autocorrect.) I am sitting on the floor comfortably (changing the position automatically as needed) and peeling a pomelo.“

The Autocorrect is a loose sequel to Autopilot, the artist’s earlier solo.