Performing Arts: Czech Season in Canada to get underway
This next item will be of special interest to listeners in North America who appreciate the performing arts: Sunday, January 19th, Czech Season in Canada, a year-long programme of theatre and dance events showcasing the talents of Czech performers, gets underway. Jan Velinger has this report.
This year will offer North American audiences a unique opportunity to experience some of the best in Czech avant-garde theatre and dance. 16 dates have been set so far from January to November, in seven major Canadian cities from coast to coast, including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Quebec City. Additional dates in the US will include performances in New York City and Albuquerque, New Mexico. It all gets underway this Sunday, with a performance in Calgary by Kristina Lhotakova and Ladislav Soukup, titled "Venus with a Rubik's Cube". Throughout the year audiences will also be able to see at least eight other groups in various productions. One of these, Krepsko, is a situation-based physical theatre, based on dance, music, and spoken text; another is an international contemporary dance group called Deja Donne. I spoke to both Petr Lorenc of Krepsko, and Lenka Flory of Deja Donne, about their groups, and their planned performances:
Petr Lorenc:"We are an improvisation group that does non-verbal improvisation - we do absurd theatre. We prepared a workshop for people in Vancouver, with improvisation, and we will have a performance there."
Describe some key elements of your performance...
"Some elements... we very much use minimalism in our theatre, clown elements but not like at a normal circus. It's, it's like an attack."
I'd just like to ask you about the performance you've prepared for the Czech Season in Canada.
Lenka Flory:"Ok. It's a performance that was premiered in 2001 in Switzerland called "In Bella Copia" that would mean something like 'fair copy', something that you finished, a finished copy of something. We toured this performance all last year, and we are going to tour still in all of 2003 to perform it in Montreal and then in the US."
One of the interesting things that came up during this press conference was the question of language. Is there language used in your performance, and if so, is it in English, in Czech, or both?
"We use lots of text in the performance, there is lots of English, but each of the members of the company speak with their own language and I believe that the text is very well understood. The scenes where it is used are very clear always."
Could you tell me specifics about the performance?
"The performance deals very much with images of human beings in front of society, and about getting rid of all the cliches put against human beings and to just rya and get rid of all those, and find out who you are, in reality."
Czech Season in Canada is the second part of a cultural exchange project that saw Canadian artists, such as La La La Human Steps, come to the Czech Republic in late 2002, the largest reciprocal project of its kind, which enjoyed great success here. In the second-leg Canadian producers chose which Czech performances they thought represented the peak of the Czech arts scene, with deeply personal themes that should resonate with North American audiences. Information and the schedule, as well as updates about the Czech Season in Canada, are easily accessible at the web-site www.czech-season.cz., so you can visit there and plan which performance to see. Enjoy the show.
