SE.S.TA Blog

The second edition of the Dance Reading Club series When the Dancers Know the Answers took place on 17 June, again in the Living Room of Studio ALTA in Invalidovna – but this time in a more Decameron-like chiaroscuro mood. Under the name Good Night Readers, the ladies from the platform Bjornsonova hosted a two-hour-long live and online reading of excerpts from texts by feminist authors such as Alice Munro, Linda Stupart, Octavia Butler, Ariana Reines, Justin Frank, or singer Eartheater – meandering from detective and sci-fi narratives to erotica and poetry. Good Night Readers started as an initiative by the Bjornsonova platform during quarantine, as a sequel to Boccaccio’s Decameron – following the plague pandemic in the 14th century into today’s viral times.

The first edition of the Dance Reading Club series When the Dancers Know the Answers took place in the Living Room of Studio ALTA on Thursday 21 May 2020, and it hosted a two-hour-long discussion which started with the question: When the dance fails as a gesture? Observing how the piece Assemblage by Martina Hajdyla Lacová found its audience in the park due to the pandemic restrictions – sandwiched later with the video excerpts of performances mentioned in the discussed text Writing Laughter – Violent Desire by Jenn Joy – brought the discussion back to the core of what is the artistic gesture and why it requires gaps, stumbling and failures.

Extraordinary project Gallery Without Borders hosted a research of eleven dance makers from the Czech Republic and the USA who, together with American choreographer Sue Schroeder, explored the role of the artistic artefact and its kinesthetic potential in the gallery – white cube space. Various movement researches were applied and reflected the display and curatorial ideas of the current exhibition Art of Long Century: 1796–1918 in the National Gallery Prague. The outcome of this long-term quarantine research was presented live in the National Gallery Prague and streamed on 14 July 2020. Here you can follow more on why these eleven movement artists decided to attend this particular project.

How do we care for each other in these times of pandemic isolations? When borders and social distancing lock us into our own bodies – forced to be detached in small bordered units, prohibiting us from meeting the other. Hapticality is denied by the only contact we have through screens. We need to touch, to feel the other – and through the other.

We asked dancer and choreographer Silvie Kudelová (CZ) to tell us a bit more about her research, current questions, doubts, and working process during her Cluster Residency in the Castle. Here is what she shares with us.