Dance performance by Karel Vaněk

»At the beginning was the apple. Since that time, when Adam and Eve proved how firmly they could bite into it, the relationship between man and woman has often been pretty rotten. Instead of heavenly harmony we have got the eternal tug-of-war game alternating between temptation and rejection, the battle of the sexes – despite the prevailing love and passion … peacefully, almost dreamily sits a couple at the kitchen table, yet below the surface of this peaceful picture is seething unrest: innocence has gone forever …« (dam, Kultur-Joker, 17./18. Woche, 16. Jahrgang, Freiburg i. Br.).

Man versa woman – an overkilled topic of the modern dance theatre. What should still be so interesting about it? What does it have in common with involved, contemporary theatre? A tot, a tremendous lot! Only seldom has a face-to-face relationship on stage such a tremendous intensity as with Eva Černá and Karel Vaněk. It is made clear here, that personal situations as the most basic means of sharing is of immense importance in the greater picture of the world’s daily turmoil and that both are linked in a fundamental interaction.

Quiet tenderness and passionate erotic play give way to an acrid satire which exposes violence in all its correlation and it happens in a place nobody believes it could happen – violence in the living room as the nucleus for immense grief. A danced shock therapy which breathes nonetheless such a strong intimacy that watching must be nearly excused as an act of voyeurism.

Eva Černá was born 1962 in Prague and trained in modern dance. Karel Vaněk was born 1958 in Most and first studied mathematics at Prague’s Karls University before he took up dance training. Both artists danced 1984-90 in the world-famous Laterna Magika Theatre as well as some other Prague dance groups. In 1991 they founded the Černá and Vaněk Dance Company and played with full-length choreographies at dance and art festivals in Montréal, Paris, Kaunas, Prague, Stockholm and San Francisco.

From 1992-96, Eva Černá and Karel Vaněk also acted for Pavel Mikuláštik at the Choreografische Theater in Freiburg (with whom they played in »Ester« during the euro-scene Leipzig 1993) and while they are moving with him to Bonn in September 1997, they will also dedicate themselves more to their own productions.