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Čtyři dny | Four days

Festival 2015

4+4 Days in Motion
20th International Festival of Contemporary Art
October 2 – 10, 2015

Desfours palace (Na Florenci 21, Praha 1),
Archa Theatre, Jatka78, Ponec Theatre

The festival 4+4 Days in motion celebrates its 20th anniversary in the empty Desfours palace and with the dance performance by the Zita Swoon Group

The international festival of contemporary art 4+4 Days in Motion is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The showcase, which was the first cultural event in the 1990s, began to explore abandoned buildings falling into disrepair and premises that were supposed to be slated for demolition. It now develops its original mission. It engages artists in places where nobody has ever seen them before. The programme of the festival focuses on contemporary, provoking and innovative artistic projects of all genres – dance, theatre, exhibitions, audiovisual projects, discussions and city walks. The jubilee is a great opportunity to give itself a new venue as a present in the spirit of the best tradition to enliven the unused buildings in Prague: the Desfours Palace in the 21 Na Florenci Street, Praha 1. The 20th 4+4 Days in Motion festival is going to take place in the nearby Archa Theatre, Ponec and Jatka78 from 2nd to 10th October.

The Desfours Palace was built in 1845 on a very lucrative area close to the Těšnov railway station. The project ‘Places of Acts’ is going to enliven the preserved part with beautiful frescos and stuccos and huge palace-like rooms,” says curator Denisa Václavová.

Two floors are going to be occupied by the exhibition Not to Want Anything, Just to be  with 60 Czech and foreign participating artists, with curators being Czech art professionals such as Krištof Kintera, Radek Wohlmuth, Jiří Ptáček, Tomáš Svoboda, Mariana Serranová and others. The exhibition is going to be accompanied by discussions and lectures about architecture, contemporary art, public space and the topic about “how not to want anything”. “We are also looking forward to Czech premieres. Halka Třešňáková is preparing a new play for the palace and Vosto5 company deals with the journey to Mars,” adds Denisa Václavová.

The festival 4+4 Days in Motion has presented foreign performances selected as the most interesting pieces of contemporary European pieces of dance, theatre and visual arts. “We focus on productions, which overlap to music and the other way round; these are music projects with traces of performance,” says Pavel Štorek, the dramaturge of the foreign programme.

The festival is going to open with an exceptional dance and music project Nothing That Is Everything, which is a result of the cooperation of the first-rate Belgian company Zita Swoon with the legendary Flemish Need Company. The main foreign programme also presents Dorothée Munyaneza, the famous French musician and performer originally from Rwanda. She composed and sings on the soundtrack to Hotel Rwanda, the film nominated for an Oscar. Other guests of this year’s festival include French musician and performer Jonathan Capdevielle, Norwegian performer Amund Sjølie Sveen, Norwegian visual artist and performer Andrea Spreafico,  Swiss director and musician Marco Berrettini, Norwegian music and dance project by choreographer Kristin Ryg Helgebostad and a performance by Ingri Fiksdal, who is going to stage it with a Czech choir. The programme is going to present Slovenian artist Mala Kline or Flemish performer Pieter Ampe.

The 20th anniversary is a great occasion for leading Czech and Slovak dance and theatre companies to prepare a very special project called Plug & Play inspired by music – dance – theatre,” says Pavel Štorek. The 10th October is the day when the Archa Theatre is going to host the unique and “unrepeatable evening, which is hard to define” with performers such as 420PEOPLE with the band Please the Trees, VerTeDance with Zrní, Petr Váša, Farm in the Cave, VOSTO5, Spitfire Company, Handa Gote, Debris Company, Lenka Vágnerová and many other people the festival 4+4 Days in Motion has cooperated in the past twenty years with.  

The 4+4 Days in Motion was founded in 1996 by Pavel Štorek, Denisa Václavová, Markéta Černá and Nikola Böhmová, who are still its main organizers. In the past 20 years, the festival has presented more than 400 foreign and Czech companies of all kinds of contemporary art (theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film and video art). The cultural projects have enliven an old sewage treatment plant in Bubeneč, Prague, abandoned ČKD factories in Karlín, the former brewery in Holešovice, the former brickworks in Šárecké údolí, the ice hockey stadium Hvězda in Vokovice, the gyms in the Tyrš House, Nostic Halls, the former Federal Assembly, the former casino in the Pařížská street, the former Institute of Folk Art Production in the National street and the U Stýblů palace at the Wenceslas Square. The festival initiated a number of site-specific projects by Czech companies, it presents group exhibitions of contemporary visual artists and curators and it cooperates with leading art historians and architects and prepares walks and lectures. The festival cooperates with cultural organisations such as Kruh, Jednotka/Unit, AVU Research Centre, Start Vršovice and others.

Festival Program  ›

Places of act ›
site specific projects for Desfours palace

Special: We celebrate 20th anniversary ›

Child 2.0 (import/export) ›
Introduction text by Pavel Štorek

 

Places of Act 2015 – Desfours Palace

Places of Act 2015 – Desfours Palace (photo: magazine Týden)