New Europe Festival 2008 and Jarmila Jeřábková Award
PRESS RELEASE
At the Duncan Centre Theatre in Prague the 10th year of the choreographic competition Jarmila Jeřábková Award took place. In recent years the competition is held within the framework of the New Europe Festival. New Europe means the central and Eastern European territory where young choreographers up to the age of 35 come from to present themselves to the public, to compete for the award and to meet each other. In 2008 the festival featured works by artists from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Greece and Turkey.
At the Duncan Centre Theatre in Prague the 10th year of the choreographic competition Jarmila Jeřábková Award took place. In recent years the competition is held within the framework of the New Europe Festival. New Europe means the central and Eastern European territory where young choreographers up to the age of 35 come from to present themselves to the public, to compete for the award and to meet each other. In 2008 the festival featured works by artists from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Greece and Turkey.
The competition as well as the festival was established by Eva Blažíčková, the directress of Duncan Centre and the pupil of the representative of Czech pre-war contemporary dance, Jarmila Jeřábková. Eva Blažíčková especially concentrates on supporting the musicality of dance expression. The competition has a special feature – the obligatory part choreographed on a piece by a Czech contemporary composer. In 2008 Kryštof Mařatka, a young Czech composer, successfully working in Paris, was the „obligatory“ composer.
The festival was opened by a gala evening which presented new choreographies by last year’s winners. The duo Lang by Katarina Papageorgiou with an unusual eely movement, as if coming from an unknown dimension, remained the most original piece of the whole festival.
The international jury, among whose five members was John Ashford from the legendary London dance theatre The Place, awarded two second prizes ex equo. The first and third prizes were not awarded.
One of the prizes was awarded to Maria Koliopoulou (Greece) for her obligatory piece Action 3 on Exaltum and Fables by Kryštof Mařatka, and her free choreography Action 1.3. with the sound design by Yannis Isidorou. Maria Koliopoulou is a mature, consequential conceptual choreographer and dancer of great stage presence. Her work is elegant in terms of visual art and shows awareness of contemporary trends.
The other second prize was awarded to Kateřina Stupecká (Czech Republic), who presented her solo Da Capo on Mařatka’s Astrophonia and her trio Al Fin on Arvo Pärt’s music. Kateřina Stupecká is an excellent dancer emanating energy. In a complicated and exact way she answers the challenges of music and space.
Both winners performed at the closing gala concert where the music trio ArteMiss performed Mařatka’s pieces and the composer himself improvised on the piano with Dora Hoštová, one of the promising Czech choreographers, was his dance and improvisation partner.
Nina Vangeli