SE.S.TA Blog

I’ve talked with Eva Urbanová – dancer, choreographer, dance maker – who was one of the residents taking part in this year’s Coaching Residencies, about her work on the piece she recently presented as her final work at HAMU (Academy of Performing Arts – Music and Dance Department). We’ve dwelled into the process of her work and the topics she was addressing together with eight performers coming from different backgrounds. We talked about the numb, hectic skin avoiding encounter and the vulnerability of becoming intimate with the other in her choreographic process.

Kathy Casey – dramaturge and director of Montreal Danse in Canada – was one of this year’s coaches who, together with Alice Chauchat – dance maker and artist based in Berlin and also a coach of this year’s Coaching Residencies – presented a conversation about their work during the round table entitled Beside the Black Box: Re-inventing Aesthetics of Coming Together on Sunday, 23 August 2020, at the National Gallery in Prague.

Roberta Legros Štěpánková, one of the artists who attended this summer’s ART KLASTRY Residency at the Estate in Žďár nad Sázavou, was keen to talk about her research and working process together with her partner Matthieu Legros. While talking about their work, core materials, points of departure and their collaboration, we were meandering around the question of how to orient and navigate the body and mind in the labyrinth of emptiness.

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.

During the first weekend in March, a pedagogical seminar took place at HAMU. It was led by Anna Sedlačková, dancer, choreographer and faculty member at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and dancer, choreographer and dance theorist Jean-Christophe Paré. The seminar was organised by SE.S.TA Centre for Choreographic Development and moderated by Marie Kinsky and Zuzanna Demlová. Zděnka Brungot Svíteková provided translation from French.