Czech Dance Platform held interest of experts from abroad too

Czech Dance platform - The Best Dancer of the Year nominee:

The 16th year of the Czech Dance Platform Festival, which was held on the five Prague stages (Ponec, Archa, Studio ALT@, Synagogue in Palmovka, ROX/NoD) was closed with the Best Light Design Award.

Altogether 17 works were included in the festival´s programme this year by an expert art jury (Kristýna Durczáková, Yvona Kreuzmannová, Ivana Kubicová, Nina Vangeli). The Czech Dance Platform was outlined as an open space for international meetings of artists and producers. Despite the fact that out of the record number of 31 registered guests only 12 were able to participate because of the situation in air traffic after the erruption of the volcano in Iceland, the platform realized its purpose. „Sunday afternoon meeting with the artists („Meet the artists“) took place in an open atmosphere and the male and female dancers, choreographers and producers had an opportunity to present their activities to the guests in an informal way and listen to their opinions,“adds the manager of the platform Kateřina Višinská.

The spectators too could express their impressions of the performance they had seen. During the whole festival voting for the Audience Award was taking place. The winner with the best average assessment 1.48 was the dance group ME-SA, which captivated the foreign guests and spectators with its site-specific project Echoes staged in the Synagogue in Palmovka. The organizing civil association Tanec Praha decided to award the Audience Award together with the Dancer of the Year Prize in one of the ceremonial evenings of the TANEC PRAHA 2010 Festival.

The closing discussion with the foreign guests brought some fundamental insights into the quality of Czech contemporary dance. All the people present agreed on a big variety and diversity of genres that had been staged during the platform – from dance, motion and physical theatre to pure theatrical approach, play with objects. They also appreciated energy and courage of the authors that were produced during their work. Within the discussion there was even a rebuke that Czech dance is developing more in the direction of dance theatre genre and is diverting its attention from deeper exploration of motion itself. Keeping dance/motion, spatial point of view, music and light design in balance is a difficult task on which it is necessary to work further. The guests were taken by surprise when it was found out that contemporary dance in the Czech Republic is lacking in professional institutional background. None of 62 performers and even none of 20 choreographers have permanent contract which would guarantee them regular permanent income; all productions are created on the project basis.

The Best Light Design Prize, which was awarded already for the second time by the Institute of Light Design in cooperation with the organizers of the platform, was carried off by Jan Komárek for his three works staged within the festival - Gaia (chor.: Dagmar Chaloupková), Crime and Punishment (NANOHACH/chor. Jan Komárek) a Tore (chor.: Dora Hoštová). The jury consisting of the light designers Jan Beneš and Pavel Dautovský evaluated Komárek´s unique approach to each of his works and diversity of the elements of light design (light geometry with mirrors, light properties, purity and timing). „Within the platform we had an opportunity to see the productions which originated in different technical conditions and spaces, but despite this fact we can claim that light design held our interest in every performance,“ add J. Beneš and P. Dautovský.

On the occasion of the festival, a celebration of the Tanec Praha, 20 let...1989–2009 publication release took place, in which John Ashford, the manager of Aerowaves – the European platform for the support and presentation of contemporary dance, participated in a virtual way (by means of skype) as a „godfather“. This publication, which records 20 years of the history of the International Festival of Contemporary Dance and of the movement theatre TANEC PRAHA, is available in the box-office of the Ponec Theatre for 90 CZK.

Audience Award:

added 23. 04. 2010