At the TANEC PRAHA festival you are presenting Accidia, do you consider it your best piece of work?Every work is different and has its own character. Accidia works very well because of the complicity of the dancers, its delicacy and its atmosphere. We are very happy with the result although we still change many things everytime we have to perform it!
What part of the piece did the Spanish audience appreciate the most? Do you think it will work in Prague in the same way?
In Spain we usually like the scenes with a bright movement, fast and coordinated. It has to do with our own traditions and behaviour! Acrobatics and portés are also very appreciated, although the work of our company is not centered on these movements at all. We hope to be surprised in Prague, your personal taste can be totally different. Maybe you will get to appreciate more the scenes with more psychological strength. Kafka is very different to Lorca, for instance!
Is the basis for this choreography a real story of one of the performers or is it completely fictional?
The story is primarily based on a book by Milan Kundera (what a coincidence!) but we do not follow a narrative path at all and we play with different scenes melting together. We build the scenes trying to imitate the way in which thoughts work: images coming and floating and melting, not always with a clear line. What is contemporary Spanish dance like? Do you feel it´s significantly different from the Czech one? Do cultural differences play a role?
I think contemporary dance is like any other contemporary art: it does not have to do with countries but with certain worries and practices. Of course there is a particular taste due to the country you live in, but we feel very similar to any other contemporary dance company in Europe and we feel very different to the traditional Spanish dance, for instance. Even in Spain you can see some differences from the contemporary dance created in Madrid or in Barcelona, and I guess we will see some differences between our practice and the Czech one, but the things that make us closer are more important and significant than those that put us away.
Why did you decide to involve film screenings in the show? Do you have a special relationship to film or was it just the intention of the director?
Since the very beginning of the company, we have always had video onstage. Tatiana Clavel loves playing with her camera and the video adds a different perspective to the play. Both discourses, the body and the video, get together to intensify the meaning. In this piece, video plays an important role to make the audience understand where we place ourselves as dancers onstage and why we are doing what we do.
What does it mean for you to perform at the TANEC PRAHA festival, what are your expectations?
We know about Tanec Praha since we started to dance and getting to know its director was a pleasure and an honour. When we were offered to dance in Prague we jumped of joy during days! In these times, we do not expect to strength our careers because of our presence in international festivals; we just want to enjoy the experience and offer our work to whoever wants to come and see us. The experience of dancing indoors and outdoors is also very challenging and we love to bump into people in the street and give our work as a present. What´s the most attractive part of this year´s TANEC PRAHA festival for you personally?
We have not studied the whole program, to be honest, but we are totally sure that it will not deceive anybody.
Dance. What does it mean to you?
Wow, that’s a big question, definitely. Dance, love, life… Dancing combines the primary elements (our bodies, their weight and measures, their functions and imperfections) with the highest ones. Every dancer feels the universe as a more understandable place when he dances. The communication between people is always more effective with body movements rather than with words, the channel is different and with other functions, of course, but the body plays real, without the bridge between significances. Of course, dancing professionally in front of an audience is not always nice or funny, but it is always a very intense experience. Even dancing on your own, or with people in a class is always positive and nurturing. Dancers are junkies of movement, junkies of the intense experience that means to let your body speak by itself.
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