Bittersweet Anniversary – NANOHACH Celebrating Ten Years by Three Premieres and Zero Financial Support

Dance group NANOHACH belongs to the oldest companies continually attending to authorial creation in the field of contemporary dance. It has already staged more than 20 pieces, collaborated with prominent foreign choreographers and received several awards. On the occasion of the company’s 10th anniversary, the members of NANOHACH prepared three premieres and a curious look back at a decade of effort in the very personal piece Move on as well as a probe into the deep metamorphosis of the soul in the Diptych project. For the anniversary, the company got two presents which seem to be paradoxical. The choreographer and dancer Honza Malík received the title Personality of 2014 at the Next Wave festival and the Grant Committee of the Prague City Arts Council rejected to provide the company with any financial support in 2015, for the first time in its history. NANOHACH is thus facing a decision whether and how to finance its further creative activities which were supposed to focus on encouraging Czech artistic production and the dialogue with incoming dance generation.
Honza Malík, Michal Záhora, Lea Švejdová, Mariana Novotná and Marta Trpišovská decided to found their own company in 2004. It was the time when contemporary dance and art were undergoing a crisis, companies were born and died instantly and the quartet of Duncan Centre Conservatory graduates were absorbing artistic experience abroad. Out of their creative energy, enthusiasm and common interests there stemmed the desire to found an association that would run a dance company of the same name. As their principal aims the company set the following: to support dance profession, authorial creation and collaboration between Czech dancers and foreign choreographers.
After several years of energetic and inspiring collaboration with great names of contemporary dance, the company, whose existence can be described in Honza Malík’s words as perpetual toiling, was confronted with a clearly defined need. “Very often, companies are formed around the principal choreographer, but we are a repertoire company and that’s why we suddenly needed to define our work and to concentrate on the Czech production,” describes Malík. Their decisions were probably influenced by the endeavour to make use of their proper potential while it was possible, and the desire to be anchored in the Czech dance chaos where hardly any company had its own choreographer, and the need to find a clear direction and continuation. NANOHACH has one lucid aim: to present dance forms differently from what is generally known, beyond the obvious storyline. Such a tendency is best illustrated by the projects of Michal Záhora, dancer, choreographer and member of NANOHACH. His essential expeditions into the world where “here” and “now” have lost their meanings, stand out of the Czech dance platform shyly but noticeably. About the company: www.nanohach.cz