British pioneering dance company DV8 Physical Theatre are going to debut in movie theatres with a provocative production John, which is broadcast live as a part of the cycle NT Live on December 9^th, 2014. For the first time, the series of drama productions shown in cinemas is going to be spiced up with a movement theatre performance, which tells the story not just with words, but most of all with dance. In less than thirty years of their existence, company DV8 Physical Theatre have become one of the most provocative and interesting ensembles. "They have been a phenomenon on the European dance and movement theatre scene for years," says Yvonna Kreuzmannová, the artistic director of Tanec Praha.
The brand new piece John has been inspired by a true story of a released criminal and drug addict. He was one of the 50 men, who were questioned by the DV8 artistic director Lloyd Newson about their attitudes towards love and sex. The performance is broadcast live on Tuesday, December 9^th from 20:45 at movie theatres Aero in Prague, Scala in Brno, Vesmír in Náchod and Bio Central in Hradec Králové, and is age-restricted to those over 16 years. Live broadcast of the eighty-minute performance starts, somewhat unusually, at 20.45. "DV8 Physical Theatre company have been a phenomenon on the European dance and movement theatre scene for years. When we first invited them to TANEC PRAHA in 1995 with their famous production Enter Achilles, they both shocked and impressed the festival goers with their courage to expose problematic attitudes within the male world, to avoid no taboos, to “get under the people's skin”. Lloyd Newson favours strong individualities, so his latest work John is likely to offer an exceptionally strong physical experience framed with an unusual personal story," says Yvonna Kreuzmannová. At the beginning of the production John Lloyd Newson, artistic director and founder of DV8, came up with an idea of questioning visitors of gay saunas, where men go to have anonymous sex with other men, to get their views on love and sex. However, in the end one of the fifty respondents drew the attention of Lloyd Newson so much that the latter decided to base his new production mostly on his troubled life story. Fifty-two-year-old John had been released from prison just a few weeks before that, moreover, he had had a tough childhood with a violent father and had gone through a drug addiction. His story was recreated this year in the form of – as it is called – verbatim theatre, where every word is accompanied by a movement based on conventional gestures and body language. His choreography is innovative and invariable, because every movement carries a meaning. All dialogues come from interviews with real people. Author and director Newson spent nine months with preparations, the company then rehearsed for another six months. He even did not hesitate to spend several hours choreographing eyebrows movements. John was performed for the first time in August at the ImPulsTanz dance festival in Vienna, until January 13^th it is scheduled as a guest performance at the middle stage of the National Theatre (Lyttelton).
DV8 Physical Theatre have been awarded for their work more than fifty prizes and collaborated with the British National Theatre four times, most recently they have staged there a controversial play about radical Islam Can We Talk About This? Their creative output is unique in its sincerity and occasionally peculiar humour, with which it explores themes that mainstream society prefers not to meddle with. Lloyd Newson, native of Australia, is a recipient of the Order of the British Empire, however, the medal from the Queen has not moderated his radicalism and desire to break taboos and the audience's expectations. The official Czech website of NT Live is www.ntlive.cz, where you can find a schedule of drama broadcasts and recordings, which is very varied as well. It includes a repertoire of works by dramatists such as Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck and others. Licensee for the current season of live broadcasts from the British National Theatre to the Czech Republic is the Aerofilms company.

Source: Aerofilms