This year’s Czech Dance Platform festival of Czech contemporary dance and movement theatre took place from April 11 – 14, 2013 on six Prague independent stages, presenting to audiences the 11 most important works of last year’s dance season. Most of the performances in the main program were sold out even before the start of the festival and as always audiences voted for the Audience Award. This award is given each year to the production that gets the most votes from ticketholders and foreign guests of the festival. In addition to the prize, the winning production also receives half of festival revenues from the Ponec theatre.
Simulante Bande by VerTeDance won this year’s Audience Award by a very close margin of two hundred points. The runners up were Riders by Lenka Vagnerová & Comp., Much More Than Nothing by ME-SA, One Step Before the Fall by Spitfire Company and Orbis Pictus by NANOHACH.
Some 40 foreign participants in the Czech Dance Platform unanimously agreed on the importance of having a single festival that presents the best of the local scene and where audiences can see such a variety of works showcasing so many different qualities of excellence. Every work featured in the Platform was worth seeing. “This year’s Platform attracted a number of experts, not only from Europe, the USA and Asia, but also from Czech regions,” said Yvona Kreuzmannová, founder and chairman of Tanec Praha. “I am very pleased with the great reaction and the level of interest in returning next year to see the development of the Czech dance scene. I believe that our artists will get offers for residences and co-productions and in fact I already know about some of them. It’s a fantastic result and my thanks go not only to the artists and partners, but the whole Tanec Praha team, led by festival coordinator Katarína Ďuricová, whose excellent work has truly borne fruits.”
In addition to the Audience Award, the festival also awarded prizes for the Dance Piece of the Year and the Dancer of the Year. The international festival jury was this year very balanced, with five foreign members from Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Germany as well as five Czech representatives. The jury’s expertise and diversity of opinions are also reflected in the final voting. The ten members of the jury gave first-place nominations to six different productions in the Dance Piece of the Year category.
The most total points went to these productions, listed in alphabetical order:Much More Than Nothing – ME-SA & Peter Šavel & Stano Dobák
One Step Before the Fall – Spitfire Comp. & DAMÚZA & Markéta Vacovská and Lenka Dusilová
Pisum Sativum – JAMU Brno & Karine Ponties
Riders – Lenka Vagnerová & Comp.
The Dance of the Magnetic Ballerina – Andrea Miltnerová Other first place nominations went to Orbis pictus by NANOHACH & Michal Záhora & Lenka Bartůňková, S/He Is Nancy Joe by Miřenka Čechová & Tantehorse, and 13th month / Requiem for Bruno Schulz by Spitfire Company. The jury admired the high performance level of this year’s productions and nominated several excellent dancers for the Dancer of the Year award. The most points went to five performers, who are again listed in alphabetical order: Miřenka Čechová, Tomáš Červinka, Václav Kuneš, Andrea Opavská and Markéta Vacovská. The winners of the Czech Dance Platform awards will be named as part of the 25th annual TANEC PRAHA International Festival of Contemporary Dance and Movement Theatre. The organizer has decided for the first time ever to design the awards that the winners of the Dance Piece of the Year, the Dancer of the Year and the Audience Award will receive. The awards were designed and created in cooperation with young sculptor Veronika Plátková (www.veronikaplatkova.cz ). In addition to the above-mentioned awards, a prize will also be given for Best Light Design by festival partner the Institute of Light Design. The Platform concluded with a round table discussion moderated by John Ashford, the director of the Aerowaves network and one of the leading figures in the British dance scene. He and other foreign experts appreciated the talent and wide range of Czech dance and movement artists, their often very current choice of themes, and last but not least their need to create and present highly professional work, despite the fact that the conditions for creation in this country are not entirely ideal. “The profound gulf between the level of the Czech dance/movement scene and the level of its support is alarming,” was said in the discussion. “It’s not normal for an artist who wants to fully devote himself to professional work to have to go outside his own country to do so.”
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species