New Europe Festival and Jarmila Jeřábková Award 2015

PRESS RELEASE

The 20th – 22nd November saw the 14th year of the choreographic competition of young and up-and-coming choreographers from Central and East Europe, founded by Ms. Eva Blažíčková, a renowned figure of the Czech dance scene, and named after her teacher and a great personality of the Czech modern dance, Jarmila Jeřábková.

The opening ceremony took place in the NoD, a well-known alternative venue in Prague, and featured The Trial by one of the earlier laureates of the award Dora Sulženko Hoštová. The two subsequent evenings introduced contestants from Greece, Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. As per tradition, these performances took place in the theatre hall of the Duncan Centre Conservatory. The closing gala of this year’s winners will begin tonight at 8 p.m. in the Disk theatre.

Ivana Loudová is the composer personality of this year’s competition. A dance interpretation of one of her compositions is a mandatory category of the contest, along with a routine of the contestant’s own choosing.

Together with the contest’s founder Eva Blažíčková, the following judges form the international jury: Nina Vangeli, dance writer based in Prague, Márta Ladjánszki, Hungarian independent dancer and choreographer, Jan Minařík, former dancer of the famous Tanztheater Wuppertal, Milan Zvada, curator of the Independent Culture Centre in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and Pawel Korbus from Poland.

The previous years saw success and awards going often to contestants from Hungary and also from Greece. This year belongs to choreographers of Russian and Czech descent. The first prize went to Inga Mikshina for her solo works, So Easy put to Ivana Loudová’s music, Prague Imaginations – Mysterious Buildings in the Old Town, and the free choreography of At Dawn. Inga’s work does not follow trends; the young choreographer listens to her body and to its genetic memory, she captures the mood in the climate of the time of the day, the climate of the body. Her dance shows the body’s responses to the subtlest tremors of the soul. Her dance also includes modest traces of the body memory – the physical, gestic and dance ways and customs of its tribe. And the sensation of beauty in movement, both in a new and traditional sense of the term, encompassed the entire work as its leitmotif.

The second place was shared by Roman Zotov from Russia, taking into account primarily his choreography of The Shoresusing Ivana Loudová’s Nocturne for Viola and Strings and Sinfonia numerica per orchestra da camera, and by Czechs Pavla Vařáková and Ondřej Krejčí of the EKS group for their elective choreography of L/Edge.

Roman Zotov presented a surprisingly complex and richly intricate duet, an image of a pair of brothers, based on childhood memories and grotesquely dissolving in the running waters of reminiscence. It was an upsetting physical theatre composed of images from tormenting dreams. An absurd, slightly naturalistic choreography with every detail thought out.

The EKS group performed a dynamic duet in close cooperation with live musicians on the stage. Their appeal was mainly in their original dance language and its precise articulation. The masterfully performed duet was based on sharp contrasts, numerous bizarre plunges, surprise rescues from these collapses, and a quizzically fractional style of intimate encounters. With all its bizarreness and constant breaks, it was elegant and carefully drawn into the space with great precision.

The abovementioned winning choreographies will be performed in the Disk theatre tonight at 8 PM, after Kapr Quartet’s concert of Ivana Loudová’s music and the award-giving ceremony.

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