BPM Comes to the National Theatre in Prague

bpm comes to The National Theatre in Prague this week. Performances run 29-30 May 2024.

Bpm refers to beats per minute, a measurement of tempo in music, as well as heart rate. The new Czech National Ballet triple bill will set your heart racing. You can expect a truly thrilling evening, consisting of works by Israel’s Eyal Dadon, Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, and the Czech creative producer, choreographer and street fusion visionary Yemi A.D.

The production features Sharon Eyal’s globally acclaimed BILL, Yemi A.D.’s BOHEMIAN GRAVITY and Eyal Dadon’s ARTZA, both brand-new works tailored to the Czech National Ballet dancers, which will receive their world premiere in Prague.

ARTZA

“Artza” means in Hebrew an order given to a dog to sit down or lie down and stay. When you say “Artza!” to another person, it is thus very rude, humiliating and disrespectful

“The piece deals with our inner animal we hide and rein in every day in order to fit into our society. Sometimes it feels that society is educating us, while also telling us ‘Artza!’”.

Eyal Dadon thus focuses on our inner demons we need to conquer and embrace, striving to find the balance between complying with social conventions and satisfying the desire to feel free. His choreography, tailored to the Czech National Ballet dancers, is accompanied by his own music. The National Theatre will present ARTZA in world premiere.

Eyal Dadon is a rising star of contemporary Israeli dance. After gaining renown as a performer with the Kamea Dance Company and, particularly, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, where he began choreographing, in 2016 he founded the SOL dance company, with whom he has travelled worldwide.

BOHEMIAN GRAVITY

BIOHEMIAN GRAVITY, the very first purely theatre production made by the multidisciplinary artist, choreographer and creative producer Yemi A.D., bearing the secondary title Searching for Freedom, explores the possibilities and limits of human movement with regard to gravity – the physical, as well as the mental and social force.

”I love merging various dance styles. I don’t deem dancers to be a blank canvas on which I paint my ideas. I draw from the trove of their knowledge, experience and emotions. Sometimes I dismantle the patterns they bear within, at others I rely on them.”

Fusing street dance and contemporary styles, Yemi A.D. seeks the unbridled bohemian energy, striving to break away from the ground, while also to find the roots that connect us to the previous generations.

The multilayer production has been created by a team including a number of esteemed artists. The leading Czech fashion designer Liběna Rochová conceived the costumes. The music was composed by Jakub Strach, alias NobodyListen, a DJ and producer who has become a respected figure on the Czech and Slovak electronic scene. Tomáš “Tommy” Pražák oversaw the dancers’ acrobatic training, and the acclaimed London-based Czech photographer Eliška Sky designed the scenery.

Yemi A.D. has previously mainly worked as a choreographer in global show business, collaborating with a number of celebrated artists, including the American rapper Kanye West, for whom he has designed concerts, tours and music videos. He has also cooperated with CBS and Apple, and worked on advertising campaigns for major international brands. Yemi A.D. considers his theatre debut a true milestone in his career.

BILL

The main theme BILL pursues is the role of individuals in society, their relations with a group, part of which they are due to identical costumes, hairstyle and makeup, and, ostensibly unified movement, beating in unison. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it is evident that the harmony is imaginary, constantly disturbed and impaired. Sharon Eyal created BILL for the Batsheva Dance Company in 2010. She employed all her quintessential traits – pulsating techno music, composed by Ori Lichtik; skin-tight unitards, exposing all the dancers’ muscles, a harsh, minimalistic movement idiom, as well as a touch of absurdity.

“I love to see unison, but crooked unison. The same timing, the same shape, the same idea, the same style, but very different.”

One of the globally most sought-after contemporary dance artists, Sharon Eyal launched her career with the Batsheva Dance Company as a dancer and, later on, a choreographer and associate artistic director. In 2013, she and her long-term collaborator Gai Behar set up the L-E-V company, which has given hundreds of performances worldwide. Sharon Eyal has garnered several prestigious accolades, including the Fedora – Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet and the Landau Prize for the Performing Arts. Her choreographies have been performed by Nederlands Dans Theater, Opéra national de Paris, Staatsoper Berlin and other major companies.

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