"Memories can resonate in the soul, just as they can bring the soul forth from within."
Haruki Murakami
WIND-UP
Choreography by Václav Kuneš, created in collaboration with Israeli musician and performer Amos Ben-Tal. Wind-up presents a dynamic slice of contemporary dance on stage, brimming with energy, imagery, and action. The performance unfolds as a sequence of scenes varying in length and style, evoking memories that emerge only to vanish, perhaps reappearing later: some themes evolve and repeat, while other elements begin to manifest, intensify, and then come to a halt. The overall effect is a laborious flicker of suggestions.
SMALL HOUR
“When something happens that changes life forever, does an hour remain just an hour?” asks the choreographer in Small Hour. In the first creation of the 420People company, dancers Nataša Novotná and Václav Kuneš retrace the memories of moments, days, months, and years following that life-changing hour. They depict the stretched-out, potentially eternal time of consequences from the "small hour," questioning how long it takes to process, forget, and accept it: hours that, in any case, accumulate along the line of life with that "small hour."
Václav Kuneš was born in Prague in 1975. In 1993, he joined the Nederlands Dans Theater 2, and in 1998, he joined the main company, NDT 1, under the direction of Jiří Kylián, where he remained until 2004, working with renowned choreographers such as Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe, Paul Lightfoot, Mats Ek, Nacho Duato, Johan Inger, Andre Gingras, and Hans van Manen, performing in various countries. Since 2004, Kuneš has collaborated with numerous companies, including Basel Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Czech National Ballet, Polish National Ballet, Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, and Teatro alla Scala Ballet in Milan, working with artists such as Roberto Bolle and Saburo Teshigawara. In 2005, he was awarded Dancer of the Year in Cannes. In 2007, he co-founded the contemporary dance collective 420People in Prague with Nataša Novotná, where he serves as artistic director, presenting a broad vocabulary of contemporary dance worldwide.
