Festival 2023 (autumn)

4 + 4 Days in Motion
28^th International Festival of Contemporary Art
October 6–14 2023, Prague

Archa Theatre, Ponec – Theatre for Dance, X10 Theatre, Alta Studio, the confluence of Berounka and Vltava, Villa Klikovka and public spaces in Prague

The 4 + 4 Days in Motion festival has announced premieres and other highlights in the program for October

On October 6, the international festival of contemporary art, 4+4 Days in Motion, will enter the 28th autumn edition, culminating on October 14. Nine days of the festival will see seven traditional and non-traditional venues in Prague, offering seven Czech premieres and projects, as well as seven international shows.

The festival program features international shows touching upon current topics and combining artistic genres in a truly fresh manner. The launch of the autumn edition will be associated with the extraordinary multimedia production THE MAKING OF BERLIN (6 and 7 October / 8 p.m., Archa Theatre). “The Belgian ensemble BERLIN uses documentary methods to work on topics that are associated with specific cities or places all around the world. The subject matter of the project is the memories of Friedrich Mohr, who was stage manager of the Berliner Philharmoniker during WWII. Being armed with cameras, interview techniques, editing charts, and actors, the BERLIN makers depict reality like the painters once did: with a little more color, live points of view, and a brush that reveals a secret undertone. “De Standaard and De Morgen newspapers ranked the lavish project among the ten best shows in 2022,” says Pavel Štorek, the co-founder of the 4+4 Days in Motion festival, programmer, and theatre curator.

BODYBODYBODYBODY is an ecstatic music and dance composition of Belgian artists Dag Taeldeman and Andrew Van Ostade, which will swamp the audience with the tidal wave of a captivating experience (8 October / 8 p.m., Archa Theatre). In her MERKURIUS/MERCURY, Gunilla Heilborn, one of the most interesting Swedish performers and film artists, tries to decipher the links between the past and the future, microcosmos and microcosmos, and time and space (14 October / 8 p.m., Ponec Theatre). László Göndör’s delicate, entertaining, and touching show LIVING THE DREAM WITH GRANDMA is a portrait of a woman, who survived the Holocaust and believed in communist ideals (13 October / 6 p.m., Archa Theatre).

The minimalist light and sound performance ELUSIVE MATTER depicts how the ordinary spirals of smoke on the screen in the dark room create a dreamy space out of an undefined mist. The FIELD performance is based on the principle that sounds can be generated by electromagnetic poles that are invisible, yet omnipresent (13 October / 8 p.m., Archa Theatre). Both projects designed by the Canadian multimedia artist Martin Messier have been presented in 50 countries and have won many awards and nominations.

In her solo performance LOSING IT, the Palestinian choreographer and actor Samaa Wakim explores how the trauma of previous generations is manifested in her body, and how it is transmitted from one generation to another (9 October / 8 p.m., Ponec). The Hungarian interdisciplinary artist Dávid Somló is going to create a dreamy, hypnotizing acoustic landscape, which invites the audience to experience something close to audio mediation and look for the acoustic treasure. Somló’s latest site-specific project SLOW STEPS HAVE EARS will be presented on 13-15 October in the public space of Prague.

Czech premieres are created specifically for the 4+4 Days in Motion festival. Many unique site-specific and community projects after the end of this year’s festival. “Curator Petr Dlouhý designed a special project for the festival called ROOT AND CONNECT that will be presented on 12 October at 4 p.m. at the Alta Studio in Libeň, Prague. It will feature an encounter with the audience and the art of performance, as well as individual authors. The participants in the unique projects are individual Czech and international artists, as well as the representatives of PAErsche, the outstanding European platform for performative arts,” Pavel Štorek says.

The site-specific production 4*8+Y≠? performed by tYhle is designed to fit the festival and the iconic space of the former Institute of Folk Art Production on Národní třída in Prague (12 and 13 October / 6:15 p.m. and 7 p.m., now X10 Theatre). The recent Kolektiv Nesladim’s show LOVE BOMBING is based on the experience and testimonies of the survivors of narcissist manipulators. Are you able to detach in time? (7 October / 5 p.m. and 8 October / 6 p.m., Archa Theatre). In their premiere show ORIGINAL FOREST, or WHO WILL NOW DISTRIBUTE THE PLAQUE?, the Wariot Ideal company with leading Czech and international performers will present accurate physical theatre with dance, life music, and strong light beams, following the performances of THE DEPTHS and the revived installation WISDOM (10 and 12 October / 8 p.m., Ponec Theatre).

The one-day multi-genre event CORNER THE ROOSTER will take place on 8 October at the confluence of Vltava and Berounka. “The confluence as an island: Prague’s entrance hall, the area between two rivers, a peninsula, lake, shelter, and a secret corner. Public space that is seen from the points of view of an urban planner, landscape architect, scenographer, theatremaker, conceptual artist, archeologist, anthropologist, and biologist,” says Tomáš Žižka, the initiator and curator of the site-specific project.

The Light Dance Studio, specializing in projects for children and teenagers, has created a non-traditional project DOES IT HAVE DEPTH? OR THE WRITING OF JOHN LEMOUN, which will revive the unique villa on the Klamovka slope (Pod Klikovkou 13, Praha 5) on 14 October. Temporary Collective likes to rearrange itself and follows the experimental forms it develops further. In GEO, the company guides us in the landscape we all occupy through dance and geophone (7 October / 8 p.m., Ponec Theatre).

The autumn edition of 4 + 4 Days in Motion will also feature the Choreography Forum – a group of Czech and international dance professionals and fans, who will analyze the choreographic aspect through the productions.

The 4 + 4 Days in Motion festival is carried out with the financial support of the following institutions: hlavní město Praha, Ministerstvo kultury ČR, Státní fond kultury ČR, In-Situ, Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Goethe Institut, Flanders State of Art, EFFEA
Media partners: Radio 1, ČRo Vltava, Culturenet, ArtMap, Kino Aero, Bio Oko, Kino Světozor, Art&Antique

The 4 + 4 Days in Motion festival is a member of the European festivals platform IN SITU and the Czech Association of Festivals (ČAF).

Media service: 2media.cz, s.r.o.
Simona Andělová, simona@2media.cz, tel.: +420 775 112 857

The spring edition of the festival (Places of Act and the contemporary art exhibition Everything’s Everyone’s at Erpet Smíchov) took place on 11–21 May 2023

The 4 + 4 Days in Motion festival to present 14 premieres of Czech and international dance and theatre companies /Press release 17/8/2023/

Čtyři dny | Four days