Denisa Musilová: The Gaze That Supports the Body. Some Persist in Viewing Us as Objects

Only moments before our meeting, she had been balancing high on a gallery wall, perched on a narrow bicycle seat – without support for her legs, arms outstretched and almost motionless. A naked body exposed to the viewers‘ gaze and to evident discomfort. What happens to the performer and to the audience in such a moment? What does she herself experience? What, in practical terms, did the preparation required by the Abramović Method consist of?

In our interview, we also return to Denisa’s own choreography Pool, which, like Abramović’s work, problematises the power dynamics between subject and object, whether shaped by the gaze or by the institutional framework of art.

Denisa Musilová has worked across the Czech Republic, New York and Israel. She has collaborated with, among others, the LEIMAY collective, Pavel Zuštiak and Miřenka Čechová. Her works have been presented in New York venues such as Movement Research, La MaMa Theater and Triskelion Arts. She studied dance pedagogy at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno and also works with Horácké divadlo Jihlava, to which she returned after her time abroad. 

When a woman looks at a man

You studied art history and museum studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. How does this shape your artistic practice?

I went to study visual art because I was beginning to burn out in dance. I needed to step away from it yet still wanted to stay close to art. I became fascinated by paintings and their histories, and what I found in them gave me the inspiration and the desire to return to dance. I often still return to visual art. The connection with what we search for in dance is in some ways similar, yet also quite different. Because there – I mean primarily in painting – everything is 2D, while in our field it is 3D.

Can you give a concrete example of how you relate to visual art? By engaging with the lives of artists, with narratives, with the medium itself, or even with the ways in which artworks are exhibited?

One can analyse anything and everything – every single painting from the earliest periods to the present. For example, I became interested in artists who go into museum archives and search for things that are hidden in various ways. Why are they not exhibited? What concept determines what emerges into the light and what remains in the dark? I am drawn to the institution’s internal mechanisms, to its gaps, and to what ought to be different.

You might be interested in the work of Alice Chauchat and her Museography Choreography, which SE.S.TA produced at the National Gallery… Do you bring this kind of institutional critique into your own practice?

I’ve been here (editor’s note: at the Albertina Modern) for five months and, to be honest, the work is so absorbing that at the moment I’m not even sure what my own artistic practice is.

That’s an interesting observation. When you’re fully absorbed in the role of a performer, the choreographic perspective begins to recede. So let’s return to the performance Pool, where Barbie dolls played a role. That piece was primarily about looking, wasn’t it?

It was about looking at women – specifically the male gaze, a key concept in film theory and visual culture, famously articulated by Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. It was about the objectification of women – about who looks at whom. In galleries, it is usually naked women being looked at by men. Women in paintings avert their gaze so that men can look at them. Yet when they begin to look back at men, they confront them, and that is where modernity begins. These psychological ideas about perception, the gaze and power struggles were exactly what interested me, and that’s what I built Pool on. I worked with Barbie dolls, which turned out to be funny because our premiere took place about half a year before the Barbie film came out. I remember thinking, „Oh my God, now it looks ridiculous that we used Barbies just when the whole world suddenly did too.“

On the contrary, you captured the spirit of the moment.

Perhaps it simply happened at the same moment, aligning itself with the world. In the performance there was a ten-year-old girl, two men, myself, and Barbies everywhere. The men had sticks they used to move the dolls around in their own world in ways that made them feel admired. And we, meaning me as an adult woman and the girl who still, in a way, plays with Barbies, were drifting in between all that.

The Abramović Method and I

You were selected for Marina Abramović’s retrospective. Why do you think they chose you?

Honestly, I don’t really know. Yet deep down I had a sense of why. I felt I was at a point in my life where everything I had gone through – the workshops, Robert Wilson, butoh, various choreographers, countries and places – had prepared me for this challenge. It was the right moment. You know, I don’t go to auditions anymore but I actually applied for this one. It was a strong inner voice.

Marina Abramović speaks about her method. Is it a form of training that she developed later to help other performers reach a state she herself had originally achieved without such preparation?

She prepared for it throughout her life – she spent time with monks, meditated and walked the Great Wall of China. She lived in a way that meant she was constantly getting ready for the next performance, always pushing further and further. For us it’s different. You tell yourself: „I’ll learn it. I’ll stand for an hour. I’ll hang on the wall for an hour. I can do that. Two hours lying down with a skeleton? That’s fine too.“

Yet you then realise you have to start preparing days in advance. You need to know what and when to eat and drink so you won’t need to go to the bathroom but also won’t faint. You have to prepare your body physically, because when you’re standing still and the energy isn’t flowing the way it does in dance, everything starts to hurt. You can’t sustain that for five months. Marina told us right at the beginning: „No alcohol, no parties. You must sleep eight hours!“ After a week of performing, you realise just how true that is – for example, if you haven’t slept well and then you lie down with the skeleton, which is actually very heavy, after ten minutes you start drifting off and so you spend two hours fighting to stay awake and present. Any lack of sleep, every bad meal, every skipped bit of physical preparation shows up during the performance. People normally collapse after half an hour of standing.

How did the preparatory workshops based on her method actually work?

The preparatory workshop was tough but incredible. She also runs it for the public – that version is, I think, five days, while ours lasted seven. When you arrive, you hand over your electronics, your food, everything. You fast the entire time – for seven days you drink only tea, you don’t speak, you simply exist. You do various „long-duration exercises“. No one tells you what time it is, when a task will begin or when it will end. You deal only with yourself. When the bell rings, everyone gathers at the designated place, they explain what you’re supposed to do, and you begin…

Something like the rice-counting exercise that is also part of the exhibition?

Yes. We did that on the last day. It was the longest exercise, taking about eight hours. You sit there, separating grains of rice. You start in daylight and finish in the dark. The bell rings and that’s it. You can then go back to doing whatever you want again…

Do people know what they’re getting into?

I think they have some idea. It’s hard, but at the same time it strengthens you enormously. The biggest lesson I took away from it was that as performers we’re used to analysing everything in dance workshops, discussing how we felt, what we think it gave us. Here, there is none of that. You can’t talk it out. If you feel awful, they simply tell you: „Then sit down.“ No one tells you anything else, just: „Now you’ll walk slowly through the forest, start.“ And that’s it. The bell rings. You’re completely exhausted and you just drop to the ground. It’s over. No one asks: „OK. How was it? How did you feel? Did you cope with it?“ You have to be alone with yourself. You have to process it internally and be okay with whether you coped or not. It gives you an enormous sense of confidence as a performer – the feeling that you’re okay with whatever happens. It’s a great gift.

Do you have your own trick for getting through it?

The most important thing is to stay in the present. To take the situation as it comes and be at peace with it. That’s actually important in life as well…

Is it psychologically and physically safe? There has been controversy over the risks involved in Abramović’s work. She exposed herself to danger. Were you exploring your own boundaries in all this?

Young artists are always searching for boundaries and taking risks, playing with danger to achieve something. I don’t need that anymore. I want to explore but no longer want to break through a wall with my head. She’s in a different place now as well. In her more recent works, like Balkan Erotic Epic, there’s humour, and she even told us how liberating that is for her. It’s the artistic process – we see it differently when we’re twenty and when we’re eighty. What you go through stays inside you. You’ve explored it. You don’t need to return to certain things anymore, yet they stay with you. She advised us: „You need a ritual to get everything out of yourself after a performance, otherwise it will start burning you from the inside and you’ll end up on drugs or alcohol. It’s important that you go home, take a shower for half an hour – or an hour – and literally wash it all away. Stay there as long as you want, but you have to take care of yourself afterwards as well.“

And what’s your ritual?

A shower. That lasts at least as long as the performance itself…

Levitate over the audience

When you were hanging on the wall in Luminosity, you were an object of the gaze again, much like in Pool. People look at you when you’re naked…

To be honest, two minutes into the performance, I no longer care at all whether I’m naked or dressed, because you’re fighting a battle with yourself – it’s really hard. And every performance is different. Luminosity, for example, is physically demanding and you have to concentrate so you don’t fall, but at the same time you feel a bit like a god up there because you’re hanging above everyone like Jesus on the cross. When you look at someone, they usually look away. Sometimes I lower my gaze, but when I see people starting to move off to the sides, I tell myself: „OK. I won’t push it,“ and I lift my eyes again. Yet there’s no rule that we can’t look at people. We can do it however we want.

So you’re not just a passive object. You have power as the subject of the gaze. That was part of Pool as well. It’s a fascinating paradox: the artist may be the object of someone’s gaze or even some form of manipulation, but at the same time she’s the one who has orchestrated the whole situation. I may be letting myself be cut, but I’m still the star here.

When you’re performing, you’re so exhausted and fighting such an intense battle with yourself that the audience actually helps you make it to the end. It’s not about „I’m up here above you,“ but about a dialogue. Marina never frames it as performing for someone. It’s about being there and showing something human.

So you’re putting yourself on display. Are you trying to prove something by doing that?

Only for myself. To get through all of it, because there’s a moment when you cross an invisible boundary. It’s hard to explain.

What was that moment for you in Luminosity, specifically?

When you’re performing, you’re trying above all to stay present and not fall. Different emotions take over every time. For example, it really annoyed me when people would come in but all turn toward the screens. You suddenly feel like no one sees you… Yet at other times they look at you – you feel their support and energy, and it feels good. Sometimes there’s no one there; sometimes people come very close to you; or they stay right at the back; or they talk loudly. Sometimes you are sitting comfortably but sometimes not. It already starts hurting after two minutes and you think: „I’m going to faint. I shouldn’t have sat like this but now I can’t change it.“ It’s never the same.

When it comes to sexuality, is art more sensitive today? Here it was clearly stated: „Do not touch under any circumstances. Respect the performers.“

A lot of people don’t have that mindset and treat us like objects. They’ll take out their cameras and want to photograph us. When you simply tell them, „put the phone away,“ they think it’s some kind of harassment and don’t understand. Yet once you explain that it’s out of respect for someone who is naked and doesn’t want their photos all over the internet, they get it. Many people step on our feet or touch us.

And is that okay or not? I mean in terms of artistic value.

It’s not okay. Today, for example, a woman came up and wrapped her scarf around me –whether she thought it was funny, I have no idea. Sometimes people say things to us. The other day, a man walked past and announced, „Art is dead.“ Some people stand between us and stare intensely, others crawl on all fours between us. People pass through in all sorts of ways – sometimes incredibly fast, sometimes very slowly. Someone might say, „Hello, thank you.“ It’s incredibly interesting. And then, of course, there are the strange ones who touch us, but that’s what the security service is for.

What happens when someone does something inappropriate?

A big security guy takes them aside and tells them either to stop or leave the room – otherwise they’ll escort them out. It depends on the incident. We always have the option to look at the person and say, „Don’t do that.“ And there’s always a facilitator standing next to us, so at any moment we can raise our hand and say that something wasn’t okay, or even end the performance if we’re feeling unwell.

Regarding those ethical boundaries… Ahead of the 2011 gala opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, choreographer Yvonne Rainer publicly criticised the event. The performers were supposedly treated like living furniture and were paid very little. Has Marina Abramović changed her approach in this respect as well?

In terms of payment, definitely. She made sure we were well compensated for the work. And as for the „furniture“ issue… I understand it’s controversial, and sometimes I even feel that way myself, but the idea behind it is incredibly interesting. In another performance (editor’s note: Imponderabilia, 1977), the artists stand in a doorway like the pillars of a gallery that is otherwise full of works by artists who aren’t physically present. The act of passing between them is actually what makes the gallery exist. That concept is extremely important.

In museums, there are all sorts of site-specific constraints, something I know very well from SE.S.TA’s projects like Dance in the Gallery. How can these different constraints shape the creation process?

A gallery attracts a different kind of audience. When you go to a site-specific performance, you arrive with the expectation that you’re going to see a show. You’re there as a spectator of a dance or theatre performance. Yet people are used to moving through galleries in a completely different way, and they look at things differently too. When they suddenly encounter a performance, it’s strange for them to reconcile the act of looking at something alive with the fact that they’re in a gallery. And Marina’s work is very static, so it’s different from, say, Dance in the Gallery. People often just walk up, take a look and say, „Yep, she’s hanging on the wall, okay“ – and move on. People nowadays have lost the habit of giving something time – they just photograph it and leave, basically just scanning the artworks. It’s incredibly beautiful when someone actually takes the time and stays there for fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s a completely different energy and such moments are the most beautiful. You feel that you’re part of a community – that you’re supporting each other.

Was the task for the viewer simply to keep looking? In Luminosity, the image really burned itself onto the retina. There was you, your shadow behind you, the square of light on the wall, and then the after-images floating in front of the eyes.

That’s exactly how it’s meant to be – that’s why it’s Luminosity. When someone looks at it for a very long time, the supports disappear from their vision and the person really starts to float. They’re essentially hanging there and flying.

Understanding both the legend and the marketer

Did you know that Marina Abramović has her own cosmetics line and speaks openly about having undergone aesthetic procedures? It’s something of a paradox, considering that her work often rests on the idea: „I’m simply a woman, simply a human being, and I’m not performing anything.“

I think she’s also a very good marketer. But I understand the paradox – a person has a private life and a professional one. They’re separate entities. Marina is a strong woman, but she’s also been through a lot, like her breakup with Ulay. And she’s very open about all of it. When she talks to you, she tells you everything straight. She’s not the kind of artist who feels the need to speak in a sophisticated way. She just sits there and says, „Did I say that once? Hm, then it doesn’t apply anymore.“ She’s completely calm about it, apologises, and says, „I contradict myself. That’s fine, I’m allowed to.“ She’s incredibly interesting and straightforward.

Did you feel at the exhibition as if you were part of her legacy, her legend? To me, Luminosity felt like a striking re-embodiment of Marina Abramović. It’s the most fundamental gesture: „I’m here.“

Yes. Levitation. Between worlds.

How conceptually driven is your own work? Some artists say, „It’s just lived experience. People can think whatever they want.“ Yet I appreciate work that engages the mind as well as the body. You yourself said that understanding an idea helps you experience it.

When I create my own performances, I’ve always needed there to be a clear cause and effect. It works on an energetic level too, but for me it’s important how I compose certain things or movements so that they connect to one another in some way. Either the situation or the movements must have a reason and a consequence. I can’t just do this and then that simply because I feel like it. There must be a continuous thread.

I want to know why things connect. Why I make a certain physical movement; why I look at someone; why they look back at me; how long we keep looking at each other; and why I then turn my head away. That already involves different psychological layers, which interest me more than the form itself because they create the specific energy of the performance. There’s something happening there that you perceive but can’t fully grasp. It’s like when you’re in a pub, watching a TV with the sound turned off. You more or less know what’s going on. You don’t know exactly but you’re fascinated. You keep watching and thinking, „What actually happened there?“ You might not be able to fully grasp it, but I, as the choreographer – the director of that film – know precisely what the little twists are and what we’re saying to each other.

Do you ever feel the need to explain it to the audience?

No. I don’t. I think the more abstract it is for people, the more room they have to see their own story in it. Someone might tell me, „Ah, that was completely about my relationship with my daughter.“ Or, „Wow, that was about how women are discriminated against.“ Everyone comes in from their own life, their own situation – sometimes they feel good, sometimes bad, tired, or not in the mood at all. And in that state, they can find something that speaks to them. If I simply told them exactly how they should feel, I wouldn’t be giving them anything extra. They’d understand it in the first five minutes and wouldn’t need to stay any longer.

Did understanding Marina Abramović’s work help you? I mean when you grasped the idea behind her piece, didn’t it diminish your own experience?

It didn’t diminish it, because even though she had her idea, every performer who entered the piece brought a different perspective to it. Each person gets something different out of it. In a way, it’s the same thing I give to people – I leave it open so everyone can see whatever they want in it. Marina gives her idea to other performers so they can find themselves in it in their own way. And she doesn’t tell the audience either. She doesn’t write anywhere: „Look at Luminosity for twenty minutes and then you’ll see everything around it disappear…“

From New York into the world of motherhood

In the choreography for Pool you write: „Instead of focusing on form, I concentrate on the psychological patterns of the characters. I explore feelings of exclusion and loneliness alongside the desire to fit in. As a woman, I want to draw attention to the repressions and misconceptions that surround us.“

Yes. I agree with what I wrote. Those feelings of exclusion and loneliness come from the fact that I spent almost a quarter of my life in other countries, and I always felt like a foreigner. You’re excluded – you just sit and watch everyone else. For example, in Israel I didn’t even understand them at first, so I spent most of my time just observing and imagining what they might be thinking and saying. By watching from the outside, you start to notice certain choreographic patterns and relationships. You just need to look around you.

So you process the feeling of exclusion by switching to the role of observer?

Exactly. It means seeing how you’re outside the main picture.

How was the return from New York to the Czech context? How do you manage to translate that experience into your work in Jihlava, where you’ve started working in the theatre?

In Jihlava I have an apartment, but right now I’m hardly ever there because I’m working on other projects. I also recently finished my master’s degree in dance pedagogy at JAMU. For me, Jihlava was more of a base that I returned to when I needed it. My artistic and dance work still takes place elsewhere, and I’m constantly on the move.

Do you perceive a difference in the approach to the body and nudity in New York compared to here in the Czech Republic?

In New York, definitely. There, people are completely fine with anything – you could walk down the street naked and no one would care. New York is so distinctive that you can see anything at all and it won’t faze anyone. It’s not like that here in the Czech Republic.

Did that environment liberate you?

Probably yes. Yet what liberated me most was finding so many friends there, and the fact that no one cares whether someone has more or less. We’re all in the same boat. When you’re a performer in New York, you have nothing. You work five other jobs and you’re trying to survive while creating something. People help each other, and there isn’t that kind of envy over someone getting a particular opportunity or engagement…

So is it somehow less competitive there?

It is competitive, but you know that if something doesn’t work out, it’s on you – you don’t blame others. In the Czech Republic, people tend to do that a lot – they worry about who got which grant, which opportunity, and so on. We’re not as used to processing these things as people abroad. There’s still a slight undercurrent of envy in the Czech mentality.

What was it like for you to fit into the team for Marina Abramović’s retrospective?

It was great. Because we all went through the workshop – and when you look someone in the eyes for an hour, it’s so intimate that you simply have to be comfortable with them. These are friendships for life. You’re connected by that shared experience. You understand each other. I already miss them.

„Pool is very important to me in terms of the transmission of patterns from mother to daughter.“ You mention the theme of mothers and daughters. The residency model is often quite problematic for parents because it requires leaving the children for a longer period of time. It’s sometimes criticized for not being very „family friendly“. How do you deal with that?

If I didn’t have a child, I wouldn’t deal with it at all. I wouldn’t even know it was an issue. But now I run into it constantly. There are many residencies I don’t even apply for because I know I wouldn’t cope – I definitely don’t want to be somewhere alone for fourteen days. Once you have a child, you start reconsidering everything, including how many performances you can realistically do in a year.

Is the environment changing for the better?

Yes. A little. Once you enter the world of motherhood, you start seeing the possibilities that exist – but also everything that’s missing. I don’t think there are many opportunities for mothers. On the other hand, I understand that artists without children also feel there aren’t enough residencies for them. In my view, every institution that runs residencies should have at least one per year open to parents with children. If they’re doing residencies at all, this should be made possible.

Denisa Musilová is a choreographer, dancer, and performer whose work explores embodied introspection, giving physical form to psychological conflicts. Having worked in both Israel and the United States, she has presented her original works – including POOL, Fitting Rooms, and Silent Beat – at renowned venues such as Movement Research, La MaMa Theater, and Triskelion Arts in New York.

In 2025–2026, she joined the team of re-performers for Marina Abramović’s retrospective at Albertina Modern in Vienna. In 2023, she completed an artistic residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, following a research residency at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center the previous year.

As a movement director, she has collaborated on numerous acclaimed theatre productions, including Marie Antoinetta, directed by Janka Ryšánek Schmiedtová, whose lead actress received the 2023 Thalia Award, and Swing Heil!, directed by Iveta Ditte Jurčová, which received the Special Jury Award at the Nová dráma Festival in 2021. She also contributed to Branický zázrak, directed by Academy Award winner Jan Svěrák, Quixote for PEAK Performances, and the opera Savior, presented by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In the Czech Republic, she has been a long-term collaborator with Horácké divadlo Jihlava and has worked with companies including DEKKADANCERS and Tantehorse. In recognition of her artistic achievements, she received the Highest Award of the Vysočina Region.

Martin Maryška, PhD, is a cultural manager, aesthetics scholar, and DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) therapist and trainer. In his interdisciplinary practice, he connects contemporary dance and psychology with visual art and graphic design, bringing artistic practice into dialogue with its aesthetic and critical reflection. Alongside his long-standing focus on dance in gallery settings, he has for many years explored visual dramaturgy through theatre posters. His doctoral research at the Department of Aesthetics, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University (2021) focused on theatricality and performativity in the context of theatre, building on his earlier studies in aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and in theatre management at JAMU.