2024-08-21 11:00:30
Dancers from the Dekkadancers troupe and members of the Czech Philharmonic are preparing a spoken word performance about freedom and knowledge called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It was inspired by Richard David Bach’s book of the same name. The production will premiere next Wednesday, August 28, in the auditorium of Prague’s Rudolfinum.
The Jonathan Livingston Seagull production will premiere on August 28 at the Rudolfinum. Photo: Czech Philharmonic | Video: Czech Philharmonic
After the Jungle Book, created last year for the Forman Brothers Theatre, this is another collaboration between Dekkadancers and the Czech Philharmonic.
Under the direction of the three-time winner of the Thália Prize Ondřej Vinklát, the dancers will meet the Philharmonic and the actors Jiří Lábus and Vilém Udatný. “We met Ondřej Vinklát a few years ago at the National Theater after the performance of Romeo and Juliet,” recalls Lábus. “Ondra told me then that he admired me since he was seven years old, and I bowed to him that I admired him since seven o’clock in the evening, when he stepped on the stage. And that admiration continues,” adds the well-known Czech actor.
The novel by the 88-year-old American writer Richard David Bach was published in 1970, but its legacy is still considered relevant by the creators of the project. “Nowadays, when we often don’t know what to believe, the possibility that is always there is opening up more than ever before: trust in yourself,” thinks director and choreographer Vinklát.
According to him, trust is like an internal compass that, with a good intention, will lead us further than where our dreams reach. “I like to be guided by this approach both when developing the concept of the performance and when working with the dancers, who themselves intuitively react to the stimuli coming from the original. This gradually creates a joint connection to the essence of the work, which leads us to the first performance,” adds Ondřej Vinklát .
Music composed by Ivan Acher. It will be performed live on stage by six members of the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of the young Filip Urban. “In connection with dance theater, the book model will work flawlessly. Its message is basically simple, but in connection with dance and music, we will manage to get it to the places where its power will multiply,” believes Acher.
The novella Jonathan Livingston The Seagull tells the story of a young seagull who stands out from the flock and does not want to search for food every day as the only purpose of life. But when he starts expanding his horizons and overstepping his bounds, the flock ostracizes him and declares him an outlaw. The seagull gradually acquires a kind of higher level of knowledge and discovers that everyone can be as free as thoughts. The simile, which leads to the seagull’s reunion with the flock, tells about freedom and the contrast between individualism, the desire to know or the ability to love on the one hand, and collectivism, mass, ordinariness or mediocrity on the other.
The members of the Dekkadancers troupe, which has existed since 2009, have many productions across genres – from full-length dance works to fashion shows, music videos and concerts. He often relies on humor and exaggeration.
After the premiere on August 28, Jonathan Livingston Seagull will be on the program again at the Rudolfinum on August 29 and 30, with the last rerun on September 1.