BAZAAR FESTIVAL IS TURNING 10 AND HAS INVITED COURAGEOUS ARTISTS TO THE PARTY!
Bazaar Festival is celebrating its 10th year. It could be a time to take stock, but that’s not really our style. So instead, for our 10th anniversary, we’ve invited to the Czech theatre and dance scene a younger generation of artists from Central and Eastern Europe who emphasise not just the resulting work, but, above all, the practice. The theme of this year’s edition is COURAGEOUS PRACTICES. Experience them for yourself from 15-25 March at PONEC – the dance venue, Alfred ve dvoře, Divadlo X10, Archa+ and other locations in Prague. Tickets on GoOut or on our website in “tickets“.
The festival will kick off on 15 March with Cyber Elf, a multimedia theatrical lecture by Polish theatre and opera director Magda Szpecht, who, at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 decided to set aside her career to date and become a cyber elf. She draws on her theatre experience in this new practice of fighting disinformation and then uses the theatrical environment to take us through a typical day in this work. The dance performance Dance Floor 2022 by Ana Dubljević, Kasia Kania and Marja Christians will be another strong encounter with artists and their practices. Their performance is both a kind of documentary and subjective research with strong embodiment. The main aim is to transform the stereotypical perception of the body and transport it to new contexts, to a feminist “pornolandscape.” This is their invitation to the performance: “Welcome to the ruins of capitalism, dear tourists! Bring your sun protection, because we’re going to be sweating in the middle of the arena in Haldovo Palace, a former socialist luxury hotel on the island of Krk.”
GEO, produced by the independent platform Temporary Collective is an intimate confession about the relationship to dance, oneself and a specific place – PONEC – the dance venue. Choreographer and dancer Tereza Ondrová has danced on this floor for 25 years. Through dance and with the help of a geophone, she leads the audience through a landscape that we all inhabit. Aleksandar Georgiev, Zhana Pencheva and Darío Barreto Damas, aka STEAM ROOM, represent another COURAGEOUS PRACTICE. You can imagine their DRAGon aka PONY as a fantastical playground for the collective celebration of bodily freedom. Numerous references to dance past and present give rise to an impression of neverending transformation and a growing intimacy that is elemental, playful and crazy. Admirers of Isadora Duncan, folk dance enthusiasts and MTV fans will all find something to enjoy. Hungarian performer Viktor Szeri addresses the topical issue of burnout and exhaustion in his award-winning dance production Fatigue, which will be part of Y: Sweat and Fire, a curated evening of interventions by Y Events, an experimental series from Divadlo X10 at the crossroads of theatre and visual art. Visit Alfred ve dvoře for the visual performance Reality Surfing from the PLY collective, which offers a glimpse of an alternative model for the coexistence of people and non-living entities. Last but not least, ARCHA+ will be taken over by a distinct figure from the youngest generation of artists: Slovak musician and film and theatre director Adam Dragun and friends. An evening composed of Dragun’s performance lecture and his short film PRCAT, in which he gradually manages to get his grandparents to speak about the experiences of their youth, will culminate with the festival part and a real celebration of Bazaar’s 10th birthday!
But that’s not all. You can also look forward to the traditional Saturday Bazaar with extracts of works currently being prepared by young artists. Anyone interested in working on giving and receiving feedback will want to take part in a 5-day workshop led by Rivca Rubin and Charles Lauder. Departing from the Löwit Mill in Liben, Dorota Michalak and Alica Minar will lead us on a performative walk meets work-in-progress. A final, but very important part of the festival, is direct engagement with “courageous artists” who want to share their practices, methods, inspirations and themes – in short, everything that leads to the final work – with the audience. Through mini-workshops, a performative picnic, discussions and presentations they will open up in Courageous Practice Sharings.