Travel, like acrobatic sex and cage-fighting, is something best left to enthusiastic teenagers and professionals. I am in Prague, where tourist attractions include classical concerts by candle-light and walking tours around architectural delights. But the main thing I have learnt so far is that cabaret does not mean the same thing as in the Fringe programme: here, it refers to a very expensive one-to-one performance in the tiniest of theatrical black boxes.
My friends who assured me that I would love Prague have been proved right. However, it is unlikely that they were referring to the two reasons for my newfound amor fou: the Tanec Praha dance festival and The Prague Quadrennial. Even I didn’t know that the latter was happening, but a few emails and I find myself the sole press representative of Scotland. I suspect we won’t be asked back in 2015.
Officially, I am here to meet DOT 504, a company who are returning to the Fringe this year, after wowing me with a particularly tough brand of continental sensuality in 2008. I am also covering the Tanec Praha, a contemporary dance festival that boasts an international line up – the finale piece Sutra manages to be a one show United Nations, matching Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Flemish Moroccan), the Shaolin Temple (China), Szymon Brzoska (Poland) and Antony Gormley (UK). Since London’s Sadlers Wells produced this, it is delightful to report that a British theatre can muster more co-operation than the American coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq.
The Tanec Praha is 23 years old, and was founded to develop an audience for contemporary dance within the Czech Republic. Spread leisurely over the month, and visiting cities, towns and villages across the Republic, it is not an addition to the tourist trade: its format invites locals to sample dance, not foreigners to binge on a weekend of packed entertainment. There is even a children’s show in the line up.
Using DOT 504 as evidence, and the number of other Czech based companies through the programme, Tanec Praha has been doing its job. With its own theatre – the Ponec – and nestled in a city that has daily productions by ballet and opera companies, the festival remains dedicated to contemporary dance, yet revels in its diversity.
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