Dates
| 10.11. 2019 / 10:30 - 17:30 / Veletržní palác |
| 11.11. 2019 / 12:30 - 19:30 / Studio ALTA |
| 12.11. 2019 / 11:00 - 18:00 / Studio ALTA |
Information
500 Years ago today, a woman, called Frau Troffea started to dance in the Streets of Strasbourg. It wouldn’t have been anything extraordinary if she had stopped after a few minutes or even several hours. But she danced and danced without stopping until she couldn’t stand anymore. After this she fainted and had a rest, but instead of ending this crazy dance, she continued, for days, weeks, months…
This is how the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg started 500 years ago – an incident which caused the death of many people through exhaustion, heart attack, hunger and thirst. It affected the whole society during its time, but still after many years it continues to generate intrigue and curiosity. Different archives and sources provide varying statistics and reasons for this incident.
Ceren Oran believes it was nothing but a personal breakdown and a protest about life at the time; the hunger, the poverty, the diseases, the misogynist mindset, the breakdown of society, the corrupt church of the Middle Ages… Frau Troffea tried to defeat all these through her dance and save herself and her soul through the trance-like state.
Inspired by this incident, Dancing Plague of Strasbourg, the choreographer and dancer Ceren Oran will present 11 days a 77 hours durational dance performance in public spaces during the DANCE Festival, 2019.
The more personal the reason why people dance, the more power it has and the more it emotionally touches the ones watching. Personal emotionality expressed by dance is one of the basis for this durational dance performance in the public space. Performers will dance non-stop, the audience (bystanders or bypassers) will see solos, duets, movements by groups in different constellations as well as scenes involving the masses. The dramaturgy of the 11 days will have both different highlights and intense lows due to exhaustion.
The different dance motivations create the basis for individual patterns, choreographies and structures for Who is Frau Troffea?, which will be be developed further on stage through repetition, exhaustion and transferring onto the other dancers. All the dancers involved in the process share common goals: to have a unique transformative experience, express their emotional and physical landscapes, as honest as possible, to interact with the public space, fascinate and touch the audience by the images they are creating and generate a curiosity for DANCE and its uniting power!
On this website you can read all the personal manifestos of “Why do we dance?” and get to know the “Frau Troffea” inside us!
► TRAILER ◄
Concept: Ceren Oran
Choreography: Ceren Oran, Daphna Horenczyk, Dante Murillo, Jaroslav Ondruš, Roni Sagi, Karolína Hejnová
Performed by: Daphna Horenczyk, Dante Murillo, Jaroslav Ondruš, Ceren Oran, Michaela Kadlčíková, Jin Lee, Jovada Zelenovic, Jean Baptiste Charlot, Sati Veyrunes, Akira Yoshida
Music: Hüseyin Evirgen
Dramaturgy: Jean-Baptiste Charlot
Produced by: Rat & Tat Kulturbüro, danceWATCH
Supported by: City of Prague, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Czech-German Future Fund, ALT@RT, National Gallery Prague, Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ.
Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
