Dates
| 30.05.2026 / 19:15 |
Information
Can dance mend our ties to the land and intimately connect us? “Lush Blast” is a walking performance in an urban park, exploring the relations between natural and artificial, wild and domesticated. Tree trunks and limbs, crumbling mountains, roaring rivers, vibrating chains. Four performers guide the audience through varying atmospheres, from evocative songs to acidic humor, asking what remains of the wilderness in and around us. Using their physicalities and voices, they morph their presences in a quest to become something other than human, inviting us into a sensual feast and a cruel battlefield. After spending time in the Carpathian Wilderness, the choreographers want to re-articulate power as a vital force rather than a tool of control.
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60 min / English, Czech
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Choreography: Dorota Michalak, Alica Minar
Creation and performance: Dorota Michalak, Alica Minar, Breanne Saxton, Ola Zielińska
Music: Ola Zielińska
Dramaturgy: Maikon K
Text: Katarína Bakošová
Stage design and costumes: Natálie Rajnišová
Production: Dorota Michalak, Alica Minar & col.
Partners: Studio Alta in Prague (CZ), Bazaar Festival in Prague (CZ), Teatrul Andrei Muresan in Sfantu Gheorghe (RO), Hellerau in Dresden (DE)
Supporter: State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, Culture moves Europe, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, National Recovery Plan, European Union, Goethe Institut, Prague City Hall, Czech-German Future Fund, IDU Prague, PerformCzech and Contemporary Arts Alliance Berlin
Thanks to: Erik Baláž, Alina Hriscanu, Ondrej Kameniar, Anna Poppa and the team of Foundation Conservation Carpathia, for guiding us through Tatra and Fagaras Mountains and sharing stories about wilderness, Carolyn Hall and Matthias Nuß for exchanging perspectives on the relationship of science and art.
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Alica Minar is a Slovak choreographer, dancer and curator based in Berlin and Prague; a graduate of BA Choreography (HAMU Prague) and MA Choreography (HZT Berlin); a programmer at Studio ALTA and curator of DANCETOPIA. Her works combine strong visuality, blending abstraction and narration with an intuitive search for humor and poetry arising from bizarre situations. On the basis of principles of dance and clowning, she researches how nudity and costumes distort the reality of the dancing body and its relationship with objects.
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Dorota Michalak (PL/DE) is a choreographer/dancer and researcher based in Berlin since 2016; graduate of Tanz, Kontext, Choreographie (HZT/Berlin), Central European Studies and Intercultural Communication (UAM/Poznań). Her choreographic work is largely based on collective processes, mixing dance, voice practice and fieldwork. Fascinated with plants, she focuses on the sensorium, biological processes and sensualities to augment habitual fantasies and cultural frameworks. It takes forms of staged and site-adaptive performances, as well as social and educational projects. Her ongoing research “Dance in Planthroposcene” has been supported by Tanzpraxis 2022/2024 of the Berlin Senate. Inspired by SenseLab – Laboratory for Thought in Motion, she practices “meshwork choreography” bringing attention to relational aspects of artistic work across institutional and bottom-up contexts. Following folk rural heritage, she works with dance as cathartic, rebellious and relation-building practice, focusing on its auditial and energetic aspects. As a dancer, she collaborates with i.a. Alice Chauchat, Isabelle Schad, Zufit Simon, Pauline Payen, Renae Shadler, Angela Schubot & Jared Gradinger. Scholarship holder of Artistic Research Abroad by Goethe Institut 2022, #takeheart Residenzförderung in collab. with Hellerau 2022, danceWEB 2020/21, PROMOS by DAAD 2019, and Młoda Polska 2018 by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
photo: Michal Hančovský