Possibilities of Affinity
Veronika Knytlová (Czech Republic)
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Sunday Sep 19 / 18:00, Vzlet
/ Public dress rehearsal -
Monday Sep 20 / 19:30, Vzlet
/ Czech premiere
What diverse ways might there be of interpreting the command “more silkily!”? This interactive movement event is inspired by a year of teaching dance online. What began as a seemingly bothersome task slowly seeped into all our pores, down to the bone, infusing our veins. Every Thursday, it introduced unexpectedly pleasant and intense experiences into our distant and mutually distanced lives. Kinship, humor, fragility, strength, flexibility, manipulation, surprise, malice, a sense of affinity… This mix of emotions, flattened onto the two dimensions of computer monitors, reduced the world to a small frame caught by the camera’s viewfinder. The choreographer’s commands beat a path from the ear straight into the brain and on to that place where we can renounce our egos and become boundless movement matter. It is a personal affair that binds us all together from a distance.
We have decided to physically manifest, in a three-dimensional space, the adventurous process of transforming a dancer from an ordinary person into a conscious, intelligent, and plastic body that acts only upon the choreographer’s instructions. To invite audiences into the performance space in order to have them become direct participants (if not even actors) in this exciting metamorphosis. Another transformation is the one undergone by the choreographer, who is reduced from an ordinary person into mere will, a voice instructing, from a distance and in real time, everybody else in the space – something like the protagonists in a computer game. It is up to the audience to decide from which reality to watch the event – whether from within or without.
Veronika Knytlová studied dance at the Taneční centrum Praha, and later participated in a number of dance workshops at home and abroad. She also gained much experience from her permanent engagement at Bratislava’s Tanca Theatre. She founded the successful VerTeDance Company during her time at university (she studied architecture at Czech Technical University and later attended Charles University’s Faculty of Education). VerTeDance has produced a number of original projects that have won over audiences and professional jurors around the world. Knytlová is also a popular dance instructor teaching future professionals and complete beginners. In addition, she focuses on therapeutic work with the body, massages, and yoga. She co-founded the Mind Move Company, which among other things produces socially-tinged dance projects.
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