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IDENTITY.MOVE! European Dancers and Choreographers Explore Identity

27.06. 2014

At the end of the eighties, the countries of central and eastern Europe entered a freer era and a renewed chapter of freedom in their history. Since then they have tried to read their past without the residue of propaganda and manipulation. They have been asking who they were, who they are and where they are going. They have been exploring their own identity, and are creating their own identity in a new context. Political freedoms have opened up new room for creative freedom. One of the paths of this emancipation has become the development and expansion of contemporary dance, so it makes a lot of sense to invite dancers and choreographers to express themselves in greater depth on the theme of identity. The desire to explore identity through the human body, the dancer’s principal means of expression, to explore identity through breath, cells, blood, bones and flesh ... as well as through theory and thought has given birth to a large international project under the name Identity.Move!

Identity.Move! is a project supported by the EU CULTURE program that provides an artistic and theoretical platform in central, eastern and southern Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea through the Visegrad countries into the Balkans. The main organizer is the Goethe Institute in Warsaw, which is providing substantial co-financing for all project activities, and the main co-organizers are Motus, producers of Alfred ve dvoře Theatre in Prague, the Centre for Culture and East European Performing Arts Platform in Lublin and he National School of Dance in Athens.

The shared theme for all the partners and artists of the platform is Identity. The project deals with themes connected to the issue of identity (from the personal to the societal and political) through research into dance and choreography and by linking the dance arts with other disciplines both artistic and non-artistic. Twelve artistic pairs from fifteen participating countries get up to six weeks of artistic residency time to devote to their own artistic research, without the binding obligation to prepare a resulting final production. This means that artists gain crucial time and proper conditions for research, experimentation, writing, technical and dramaturgical tests, discussion – in short, everything for which there is insufficient funding in central and eastern Europe.

What will take place in Prague? This year three artistic pairs will be in Prague on summer residencies: Nives Sertić (HRV) and Sonja Pregrad (HRV), Ben J. Riepe (GER) and Pavlos Kountouriotis (UK/GRC), Agnija Šeiko (LTU) and Ingrida Gerbutavičiūtė (LTU).

The residencies will be based in the space of Alfred ve Dvoře Theatre and at the venues of the other partners in the project – Studio Alta, Ponec Theatre, and SE.S.TA Centre for the Advancement of Choreography in Žďár nad Sázavou. As part of the residency program creative workshops will be held led by experienced European teachers and coaches and some will be open to local dance artists. At the end of the residency the artists will present the results of their work to the general public, either in a discussion format, or by offering a sample of their work. We can look forward to this presentation in Prague at Alfred ve Dvoře Theater at the end of July 2014. Residencies will simultaneously be taking place also in Essen, Poznan and Athens. The curating team selected Halka Třešňáková of the Czech artists who applied to the project. Another Czech artist, director Petra Tejnorová, is also, as she is part of an artistic pair with Jaro Viňarský representing Slovakia.

The culmination of the Identity.Move! project, which was launched in 2012, will be the Bazaar, an international networking get-together of artists, theorists, organizers, promoters, critics, and the general public that will be held in Prague in March 2015. The Bazaar reflects an important aspect of the philosophy behind Identity.Move! – the aim of bringing together artists from the participating countries, giving them an opportunity to get to know each other and initiate future collaboration and providing them with a space where they can explore their own identity and the fate of the dance arts in post-communist Europe.

Jana Bohutínská













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