“How to practise and inhabit an exhibition? How do the bodies of artworks haunt our bodies? And what about the emotions we feel when discovering a new place or work of art?” The Baroque Old Masters II in the Sternberg Palace provide a reference to the project Dance in the Gallery: A Fancy, a kind of choreographed parade for “more art in our lives!” moving between the collections and Baroque palaces of the National Gallery Prague in Hradčany.
The SE.S.TA Centre for Choreographic Development has invited Internationally acknowledged French choreographer Alban Richard, who will engage in a dialogue with NGP curator Andrea Steckerová, three Czech/Slovak choreographers Hana Polanská, Viktor Černický a Katarína Brestovanská, and inspiring people of Prague’s local communities to create all together a choreographic activation-performance in the form of a Baroque futuristic guided tour.
“I always work in museums with these questions in mind:
How can we practise, how can we inhabit an exhibition?
How are our bodies haunted by the bodies of artworks, even unconsciously?
What about the emotions evoked by discovering a place or a work of art?
How do old souls inhabit our own?
How are our emotions always connected to the same universal ground?
Why is there a strange ghostly mood that haunts our present?
Why are spectral figures so vivid in our imagination?”
(Alban Richard)
A FANCY (RICHARD & STECKEROVÁ)
A Fancy is a journey between the Schwarzenberg and the Sternberg Palaces throughout the Old Masters I and II collections of the National Gallery Prague, and the architectures of the two palaces. It begins like a quite usual guided tour in one of the grand rooms of the Schwarzenberg Palace, then turns into a protest parade calling for “more art in our lives!” and lands lightly in the empty spaces of the Sternberg Palace haunted by frescoes and ghostly bodies emerging from abandoned corners.
Throughout the performance, the notion of Baroque is approached through the prism of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical research on the Fold and the Baroque: “Baroque does not refer to an essence, but rather to an operational function, to a trait. It keeps making folds. Baroque doesn’t invent the thing: there are all the folds from the East, the Greek, the Roman, Roman, Gothic, Classical folds… But Baroque bends and recurves the folds, pushes them to infinity, fold on fold, fold according to fold. The Baroque feature is the fold that goes to infinity.”
A Fancy is a piece of instrumental music that musicians invent while performing.
During the performance, the audience will be accompanied by Timon of Athens: A Curtain Tune on a Ground (Z. 632), composed by Henry Purcell.
EXPERIENCE THE CREATIVE PROCESS – JOIN US
Let Baroque elevate your spirit and body and ignite your creativity. Regardless of your artistic experience, create A Fancy with us for three evenings and the weekend of April 9–13.
You can also take part in:
THE POTENTIAL OF THE SITUATION – DANCE IN SITE-SPECIFIC
WORKSHOP FOR VISUAL ARTISTS AND CURATORS
This experimental workshop with Alban Richard is for movement and visual artists who want to explore how to create within the constraints of a situation by observing and responding to its unfolding possibilities.
FOLLOW AND SHARE
WHO IS ALBAN RICHARD
Alban Richard, currently a director of Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen en Normandie, discovered contemporary dance while he was pursuing literary and musical studies. From the late 1990s, he worked for various choreographers such as Odile Duboc, Olga de Soto and Rosalind Crisp. In 2000, Alban Richard founded Ensemble l'Abrupt for which he created about thirty very different pieces, always in close interaction with a musical work whose writing and formal structure he questioned. Consequently, each creation opens up new research and a new performance style, setting itself apart from the previous one. The way he develops his shows, using restricted improvisations to devise the work directly on stage, encourages the performers to become creators of their dance.
WHAT IS DANCE IN THE GALLERY?
Dance in the Gallery is a long-term interdisciplinary series that explores the multilayered relations between movement and visual art in the site-specific context of an art museum. It facilitates collaboration between choreographers and curators and seeks new ways to engage audiences.
The SE.S.TA Centre for Choreographic Development organises the project in collaboration with the National Gallery Prague and the National Choreographic Center in Caen-Normandy, with support from the Fortna Convent of Discalced Carmelites at Hradčany.
CREATIVE TEAM
Artistic Director/Choreographer: Alban Richard
Curatorial Collaboration: Andrea Steckerová
Performers: choreographers Hana Polanská, Viktor Černický, and Katarína Brestovanská, along with people of Prague communities
Series Concept: Marie Kinsky
Project Manager: Martin Maryška
SE.S.TA Production: Eva Dryjová
SE.S.TA PR and Marketing: Martin Říčan
Special Thanks: Kateřina Pazderová (NGP Production), Hana Říhová (Fortna), Petr Soukup, Šárka Sklenářová, Petr Tichý
PRODUCTION
– SE.S.TA Centre for Choreographic Development
Partnership/Co-production
– National Gallery Prague
– Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen en Normandie
Community Partner
– Fortna – Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, Hradčany
Media Partners
– Opera PLUS
– Taneční aktuality/Dance Context
– Taneční zóna (Dance Zone)
Financial Support
– City of Prague
– Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
(In the picture above: Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Young Lady, 1626, National Gallery Prague)
