Bazaar Festival: SATURDAY BAZAAR Part 2

Presentations from future performances.
performance length: 210 min
The SATURDAY BAZAAR is the center of the 2017 Bazaar Festival. Over the course of the entire day at Studio ALTA, audiences can look forward to two blocks of works-in-progress by dance and theater artists from the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Israel, Serbia, Slovakia, and other countries. What does our physicality say about us, who are we in terms of evolution, how are our experiences and memories split between reality and virtual worlds, what utopias are possible today, and how does our identity change in relation to others?

Both blocks of performances will be followed by a public discussion from the RespondART* series, moderated by Alice Koubová. The Saturday Bazaar concludes with an after-party featuring DJ Johana.

Block 1: 2–6pm
HAZARD ZONE / Marta Bichisao (IT), Zdenka Brungot Svíteková (SK/NO/CZ) a Sylvain Sicaud (FR)
KEEP CALM / Ufftenživot (CZ)
STEREOPRESENCE / Cristina Maldonado (MEX)
+ RespondArt discussion with Alice Koubová

Block 2: 6:30–10pm
IN THE NAME OF KAR / Markéta Jandová a Jitka Tůmová (CZ)
THE ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA: THE STATE OF THINGS TO COME (PRAGUE EMBASSY) / friendly fire (DE)
A DANCE IS A DANCE IS A DANCE / Agata Siniarska & Xenia Taniko Dwertmann
+ RespondArt discussion with Alice Koubová
+ DJ Johana

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IN THE NAME OF KAR / Markéta Jandová a Jitka Tůmová
Excerpt /15 min. / no language barrier

In the Name of Kar explores the subject of death as a natural part of life. The main inspiration was Czech sociologist Jiřina Šiklová’s book Death Banished, which explores how death has become taboo in contemporary society. Instead of looking for the tragic dimension of death, however, the performance’s creators try to take a more natural viewpoint, focusing on the rituals associated with it: burial, funeral rites, bidding farewell.

A “kar“ is a funeral feast where people get together to remember the soul of the departed. As in any feast, food is one aspect of kar. This is both natural and absurd. By its very nature, a feast is full of symbolic meanings and can be understood as a perfect social metaphor.

The performance is currently a work-in-progress. The creative team, too, is gradually being expanded, most recently by the addition of accordionist Aliaksandr Yasinski, whose live performance adds an extra dimension. The authors’ aim is to create a final performance that will explore a subject that many of us try to ignore.

Idea: Markéta Jandová
Choreography and performing: Markéta Jandová and Jitka Tůmová
Music: Aliaksandr Yasinski

Markéta Jandová is a Ph.D. student in choreography and the theory of choreography at HAMU. Her current project, In the Name of Kar, which she is creating in collaboration with dancer Jitka Tůmová, was born out of a summer residency at Studio ALTA. She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to art, with an emphasis on audiovisual media: her current medium of choice is film, which lets her explore new ways of looking at dance. She has appeared in the Spitfire Company’s performances of Animal Exitus and Sniper’s Lake.

Jitka Tůmová studied at the Dance Center Prague, from which she graduated in 2005. She subsequently attended the London Contemporary Dance School. She gained much experience in Great Britain, where she worked with the Phoenix Dance Theatre, Phil Sanger Dance Company, and Balbir Singh Dance Company. In the 2014/2015 season, she became a member of the Prague Chamber Ballet. She has worked with choreographers Markéta Jandová and Hana Polanská Turečková. She also gives lessons in contemporary dance.

With thanks to: Motus (producers of the Alfred ve dvoře theatre), Studio ALTA

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THE ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA: THE STATE OF THINGS TO COME (PRAGUE EMBASSY OPENING) / friendly fire (Leipzig)
Excerpt / 15 min. / in English, Hebrew and German

Now, exactly 100 years after the practically unknown founding of the ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA, it finally opens its Embassy in Prague as part of the 2017 BAZAAR festival, in order to present its history, arts and culture to a rapt audience: "The lions of history are still dreaming! Let us look to the moles instead!"

The ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA was founded in 1917 during the turmoil of the First World War – finally turning a small part of Uganda into a refuge for those who fled from that "dark continent" known as Europe. Among the lions and savannas, dotted with Bauhaus-inspired socialist Kibbuzim, there now exists a state which is as much a utopian laboratory as Theodor Herzl's visionary "old new land". Called "the state of things to come" by its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA is as much a spatial entity as an temporal one: existing on the edge of the night of history and nightmares, it comes from the future more than it comes from the past. As a place out of place, the republic also is a time out of time, re-collecting and re-locating lost and partially forgotten futures in the night of the present. Indeed it is a state of things to come.

friendly fire is a free theatre and performance group from Leipzig (Germany) founded by Melanie Albrecht, Michael Wehren and Helena Wölfl. friendly fire create time-spaces in which the ghosts, animals and monsters of the past, present and future are let loose. The question of the futures of the 20th and 21st centuries is a central motive of their work which they explore between fact and fiction, archive and hallucination. In their works friendly fire use formats like theatrical performances, installations, performance lectures, audiowalks and scenic interventions. They develop theatrical situations and experimental set-ups which are uncanny and funny, entertaining and disturbing, intimate and alien at the same time. Since fall 2015, friendly fire have been part of the LOFFT Arts Development Program. Their latest production was ZOOROPA (2016).

Tami Leibovits is a choreographer, dancer, teacher and costume designer. Lives & works in Tel Aviv. Her artistic processes investigates the live body and image set in the spheres between dance, performance and visual art. Since 2010 Tami is working as an independent choreographer, presenting her work in festivals in Israel and abroad. Her works dissolve the “Iconic” into raw material of body, movement, sound and light. Among her pieces: THE CALLING (Curtain Up Festival 2016), THE HAPPENING (Curtain Up Festival 2015), This Is Europe (Opera Fringe- Mandel Center & Diver Festival 2014), God Is Measuring The World With A Compass in collaboration with Asaf Aharonson (MASH Festival 2012).

Dror Liberman is a young Israeli contemporary dance choreographer and performer, and an active member of the Clipa visual theater collective. He finished his studies at the Haifa Contemporary Dance School in 2013. Since then, as a freelancer he has cooperated with many different artists and dance companies, and as an independent choreographer he has developed own choreographic works as well. The core topic of his interest is based on exploring the "Cultural Terrorism" as a diffrent ways that art can function in nowadays world. His works demonstrate a wide scale of skills and abilities. It is hard to relate to his works to one style or to one specific genre, as he strives to create a new language in every piece of his.

friendlyfire-friendlyfire.blogspot.de

With special thanks to: LOFFT Leipzig, Machol Shalem Dance House, Jerusalem

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A DANCE IS A DANCE IS A DANCE / Agata Siniarska & Xenia Taniko Dwertmann
work in progress / 30 min. / in English

A. and X. have known each other for four years but have never worked alone together. Some say they look like each other but they aren’t so sure. They seem fascinated by some of the same things but each has a completely different approach. So, where to start? In which language? Should they speak, should they scream, should they whisper?

What does it mean to talk to one another on stage (without words)?

Let's just say they're doubles. Let's say that together, they can make a difference. What kind of work did they always want to make? What kind of work can they make for (one) another? What does it mean to work together? Work with an other? Does one need to be the bigger sister? What if they're twins? What if they're both adopted? What does it mean if one has more money and the other more fame? Just imagine everything they could be doing together. If we were to marry our biggest inspirations to each other, our biggest fears, our biggest urgencies, our biggest problems, our biggest flaws, our biggest questions, what would the children look like?

Concept and performance: Xenia Taniko Dwertmann, Agata Siniarska

Agata Siniarska makes works within the formats of performance, events, practices, lectures, videos, and others. Having given a chance to different kinds of theatrical forms, having studied choreography, currently she devises feminist fun studies and cultivates her yearnings for language and writing, cinema and animation in the scope of her practices. She is a founding member of female trouble - a friendship based collective revolving around identity, body, feminisms, pleasure, affirmation and love. Addicted to fiction, she conducts her investigations, fashioning herself as a tool of rhetoric, through the cultural structures inscribed to her. Every action she makes, fueled by the energy of profound theoretical hesitancy, she approaches with passion and intense fascination, acting many times not alone but in the company of many exquisite adventures.
cargocollective.com/agatasiniarska

Xenia Taniko Dwertmann is a choreographer, performer, writer living in Berlin. She is a member of the friendship-based collective female trouble and co-founder of the public platform VULVA CLUB, an artistic platform amplifying feminist/queer perspectives in temporary communities. In her artistic work she draws from cultures of collaboration and approaches choreography as an experimental practice of relation. Most of her works engage in exhausting physical and intellectual states of paradox. Most recently her work researches and engages activities of care, hosting, maintenance and other forms of unproductive physical labor. She has studied philosophy and politics in Leipzig and Paris, and is a 2016 graduate of the program ‘Dance, Context, Choreography’ at HZT Berlin. Xenia Taniko Dwertmann has collaborated with and worked for international artists such as Ania Nowak, Agata Siniarska, Julia Gladstone, Hana Lee Erdman, Roni Katz, Miriam Kongstad, Julian Weber, deufert&pliscke among others.

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PUBLIC DISCUSSION FROM THE RESPONDART SERIES, MODERATED BY ALICE KOUBOVÁ II.

The RespondART project is supported by the Czech-German Future Fund as part of the Czech-German Cultural Spring project. The 2017 Czech-German Cultural Spring is a cross-border cultural initiative of the German Embassy in Prague, the Goethe-Institut in Prague, the Czech-German Future Fund, and the Czech Centers in Berlin and Munich, in collaboration with the Czech Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Alice Koubová is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences and a lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Her main focus is on the subjects of performative philosophy, post-phenomenology, the philosophy of physicality, and ethics. She is the author of Self-Identity and Powerlessness (Brill), and has written many other books and articles in the aforementioned fields. Besides traditional philosophy, she also teaches courses and organizes workshops mixing philosophy, art research, and original performance. She is the recipient of a Josef Hlávka Award, a Libellus Primus Award, and the Otto Wichterle Award.

friendly fire- Zooropa Markéta Jandová & Jitka Tůmová RespondArt support RespondArt support friendly fire support friendly fire support