Ukraine platform: Bohdan Polishchuk – DANSE MACABRE. IMMORTAL DANCE and Yana Reutova – TOGETHER ALONE

DANSE MACABRE. IMMORTAL DANCE

Bohdan Polishchuk

Ukraine

Duration: 30 min.

We offer intellectual, refined and highly visual dance performance which is at the same time relevant and conceptual. After all, the audience will read not only the contemporary expressive movements but also the underlying contents, references and contexts. The shared vision of the director and the choreographer is an appeal not only to frank, provocative theater, but also to visual, aesthetic theater. Combinations of opposite, contrasting categories works for maximum expressiveness.

Nudity, which fits as much as possible to emphasize the movement, leaves visible every micro movement of the body, emphasizes its plasticity and nature, at the same time acquires a certain decorativeness, colorfulness and a new expressiveness that can only arise from the processing of nature by human hands. 

A girl with a scythe certainly evokes powerful and recognizable associations. However, her nudity will make this image wider and more universal. You will see both Death and the one who faces it. You will see outrageous brutality and insecurity. Thirty minutes of scythe dance. Thirty minutes of the dance of death. Dance of life.

Director and scenographer: Bohdan Polishchuk

Choreographer and performer: Lesia Kekuatova

Composer and musician: Varvara Turta

Created with the support of: British Council Ukraine, The Place, Ukrainian Institute and UA Contemporary Dance Platform

TOGETHER ALONE

Yana Reutova

Ukraine

Duration: 25 min.

Chornomorsk, Odesa, Lviv, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhia… cities on the map of Ukraine that the dancers left in search of safety in the EU after the war broke out. Their stories are different, but they have one thing in common: they all fled from an occupied country and are confronted daily with the trauma, uncertainty and fear that comes with being a refugee in a foreign land.

Five female Ukrainian dancers, torn from their homes, are here and now. Each for herself and yet together. They are kept above water by their creativity, the ability to create and the opportunity to find a new community – an artistic family.

At the same time, Together Alone brings closer the work of other Ukrainian artists. The production is inspired by Anton Ovchinnikov’s verses written during the war in Kyiv and is accompanied by the music of the Canadian-based Ukrainian radical anti-Putin band Balaklava Blues. Tomáš Kerle took care of fine-tuning the sound atmosphere.

Performers: Diana Khrushch, Olena Korotkova, Anastasiia Pavlovska, Yana Reutova, Valeriia Tsvirkunova (UA)

Lightning Design: Dominik Šimurda (CZ)

Collaboration on the lighting concept and technical supervision: Katarína Morávek-Ďuricová (CZ)

Music: Balaklava Blues (CA/UA), Tomáš Kerle (CZ)

Poetry: Anton Ovchinnikov (UA)

Recitation: Olesa Usata (UA)

Producer: Tanec Praha / PONEC – dance venue

Thanks to: Art Centrum Krenovka, SUDOP Real a Yvona Kreuzmannová su Tanec Praha

Premiere: 2023 PONEC (Preview 25.11. 2022 PONEC)