4+4 DAYS IN MOTION

12. International Theatre Festival
May 19th to 26th, 2007, Prague
National Museum of Agriculture and its Surroundings -
Ponec Theatre – Archa Theatre -

PRESS RELEASE

www.ctyridny.cz

The 12th annual 4 + 4 Days in Motion International Theatre Festival will take place from May 19th to the 26th 2007 at the Ponec Theatre in Žižkov, at the Archa Theatre near the Florenc Metro station and at the National Museum of Agriculture and its surroundings of the Letna Park.

Contemporary experimental world theatre and dance that uses multimedia and/or live music as a part of its creation will be found in the projects of the following world renowned companies and artists: Superamas (France/Austria), Motus (Italy), Kinkaleri (Italy), Thomas Lehmen (Germany), Velma (Switzerland), Nigel Charnock (Great Britain) and Good Girl Killer (Poland). The festival will also present the premiere of a new site-specific project (a project inspired by a particular location and its environment), that was conceived by a group of Czech performers under the direction of the Dutch company Silo.

This year´s festival was initiated by a new dramaturgical line – the frontiers between art and sociology. The section entitled PANORAMA will be represented by five international projects:

ARTISTIC LABORATORY

During the festival, the project “consTRUCKtions - conNEXTions” will be introduced as a mobile laboratory in the form of a specially outfitted vehicle. The central theme of the project is migration as one of the main challenges as we strive towards a successful shape of the future Europe. Working with the festival on the project will be Soho in Ottakring (Vienna), Theatre Institute (Prague), Metal Culture (Liverpool), Cola Production (Marseille) and the Cosmos of Culture (Athens).

DOCUMENTARY PRODUCTION

Another project, entitled “Bystander Effect”, will be created by Czech director and dramatist Miroslav Bambušek together with the Mostar Youth Theatre in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The production, focusing on the tragedy of the people of the city of Mostar, will adapt the horrific reflections of the war and the discovery of their society’s natural catharsis in the surrounding area of the Stalin Memorial at Letna Park.

EXHIBITION

The international multimedia project based on the association of large format photographs, videos, live music, texts and performance will have its world premiere during the Four Days Festival. Hanging Around will present various ways in which people spend their free time in various cities and villages throughout Europe – in front of their houses, on the streets, in parks, in buses, at train stations... spending time “without no real purpose in mind“. The exhibition, initiated by the Artscenico artistic company from Dortmund, will include more than 50 photographs from all over the world.

VIDEO

The project ”WEST” by Italian multimedia company Kinkaleri originated in nine European cities and captures the inhabitants of Western European cities through the use of a documentary camera and attempts to uncover their hidden identities. In each city, the video installation contains a live broadcast of the exteriors, in our case from the streets of Prague.

The last part in the series of the Panorama Section is the documentary video project “Native Now”, created by artists from a Navajo reservation specifically for the festival.

SITE – SPECIFIC PROJEKT

The organizers of this year’s festival have prepared an international site-specific project directed by the famous Dutch company Silo. Silo and members of the Czech performing arts community (Halka Třešňáková, Veronika Švábová, Stage Code, Jan Burian, Howie Lotker, etc.) are preparing a theatre/art project entitled “Kultivar” for the National Museum of Agriculture and its surrounding at the Letna Park. (www.silotheater.nl)

Production at Archa theatre
and Ponec theatre:

The Four Days Festival will open with the Austro-French company Superamas, who will perform for the first time ever in a former Eastern bloc country. Their most recent production „BIG 3rd episode (happy/end)“ incorporates film excerpts written by the performers, dance pieces, theatre, soap operas and live music creating a provocative parody of lechery and envy that encapsulates today’s consumer society. (www.superamas.com)

Nigel Charnock - founder and member of the DV8 Physical Theatre Company for several years – breaks through the boundaries of performance and dance and continues to explore and develop dance as a genre as he works with different art disciplines. His latest production “Frank“ is a tragicomic monologue based on improvisation, song and dance.

(www.cueperformance.com/nigel.html)

The Swiss theatre-music project “Velma Superstar” absurdly combines classical and rock music - the resulting dramatic shape is not far from a Zen drawing as it is from the Marx Brothers´ “Night at the Opera”. The project will also include the participation of 20 Czech “chorus singers”.(www.velma.ch)

The solo performance “Lehmen Lernt“ by the famous German choreographer Thomas Lehmen comes to us from the reality of what we are and are not able to teach ourselves over the course of our lives. The performance was one of the highlights of the German dance platform in Stuttgart in 2006.
(www.thomaslehmen.de)

”Rumore Rosa” is the latest performance of the new series of creations from the Italian company of artists Motus. This multimedia performance piece is a reaction to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and is loosely based on his melodrama “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant”, a story about a woman, a fashion designer, who falls in love with one of her young models.
(http://motusonline.com)

The Polish company Good Girl Killer combines contemporary dance, live music and video art and very humorously and sarcastically looks back at that particular period in our lives when we played punk music and disco on our old cassette recorders.

(www.ggk.artportal.pl)