News

PRESS RELEASE / SMALL FORMS ARE BEAUTIFUL - THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN THE ALFRED VE DVOŘE THEATRE

17.06. 2015

Just like the Prague Quadrennial is a cultural event that goes far beyond the city where it takes place, it goes far beyond being just a showcase of stage design. Motus, producers of the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre, also goes beyond to works with both the local and the international scenes and so naturally it is taking part in PQ2015 as part of the PQ's Performing Prague section, offering once again a special performances series, Small Forms are Beautiful.

This series introduces extraordinary performance works which have been developed in residency at the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre: the Handa Gote Research and Development group's new work Mutus Liber, Andrea Miltnerová and Jan Komárek's gem Dance of the Magnetic Ballerina and an interactive performance for one audience member at a time called Interruptor, created by Cristina Maldonado as part of her project The Stranger Gets a Gift Service.

What are small forms for the stage? What is beautiful about them? Size is a relative category, while beauty can be found in performance energy, artistic inspiration, or in the intensity of audience experience.

Mutus Liber is a performance created according to instructions in an alchemic book of the same name from 1677, and it is an organic sequence of handcrafts, handmade events, tiny consecutive worlds. It transforms both matter and meanings, creating a tiny, changing complex universe, flowing along like honey with a live period music accompaniment.

While in Mutus Liber time unravels with the slowness of European early modern history, the next two performances take the audience directly into place of timelessness. The Dance of the Magnetic Ballerina is Andrea Miltnerová's own solo dance performance. The technical and physical demands she puts on herself are so extreme and so ecstatic, that the spectator completely loses a sense of time as her intense energy takes full force in a compact space.

The last performance as part of the Small Forms are Beautiful series will be Interruptor by Mexican performance creator Cristina Maldonado. More than a performance, this is an art service for one spectator at a time, a spectator who finds himself in the unusual framework of a purely visual dialogue. In collaboration with a partner on the other side of a projection screen, the spectator creates images in which the only time is that of the imagination. The only limits are the spectator's creativity and empathy. Here again we see that the size of small forms is completely relative.

Advance tickets to Mutus Liber and Tanec magnetické balerínky through Goout.cz

June 19 and 20 / 6 PM / MUTUS LIBER / Handa Gote Research & Development

June 22 and 23 / 6 PM / DANCE OF THE MAGNETIC BALLERINA / Andrea Miltnerová & Jan Komárek

June 25, 26 and 27 / 12.00 – 21.00 / INTERRUPTOR / The Stranger Gets a Gift Service / reserve at bitly.com/alfredtheatre