A contemporary dance documentary about the World Ballet Master from Brno.
For many years, the ProART Company ensemble has focused on presenting multi-genre theater projects that respond to cultural personalities or works of Czech history, social issues or political tendencies of the present and the past. Realization of the musical-dramatic performance Psota: The Master is a contemporary artistic reaction to the personality and legacy of the important Czech ballet artist Ivo Váni Psota (1908-1952), who influenced the development of Czech ballet in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1932, after disputes at the Brno Theater, he accepted the engagement of the group Original Ballet Russe (one of the successors of the legendary Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo), with which he toured throughout Europe, the USA, Canada and Mexico. In 1936 he returned to Brno, where in 1938 he was responsible for the world premiere of the ballet Romeo and Juliet Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev - he himself danced the title character Romeo. He was also caught in Brno by the occupation. In 1941, after a long effort, he obtained permission from the occupation authorities to travel to the United States, where he first accepted an engagement at the New York Metropolitan Opera and later moved back to Ballet Russ. He became the deputy director of the ensemble and toured with him successfully throughout the American continent. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1947, when he regained the post of artistic director of the ballet of the National Theater in Brno, where he concentrated a large part of the most talented young dancers of the then generation. He died suddenly in February 1952 as a result of a stroke under hitherto unclear circumstances.
The Psota project develops the dramaturgical line ProART focused on important personalities of Czech culture and their significance and legacy for contemporary society. In the past, ProART created multi-genre projects about Ema Destinnová, Ivan Blatný, Jiří Orten, Vladimír Holan, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Hugo and Pavla Haas. The author of the project is the internationally active choreographer and director Martin Dvořák, who is based on the memories of still living witnesses and available archive materials. Formally, we can classify the project between the combination of dance, author's movement theater and documentary.
Dvořák collaborates with the archives of the National Theater in Brno and the Provincial Archives in Přerov, as well as with living witnesses - ballerinas Jarmila Šlesingerová and Olga Skálová. The aim is to bring the personality of Ivo Váni Psota closer through witnesses and available historical sources. However, this is not his biography. On the contrary, the creators strive to move to new creative practices and innovation of the ballet movement vocabulary by examining his personality. This aspect is a strong motive for creating performances. After years of foreign experience, Psota returned to Brno several times. Ballet has reformed and innovated here, dramaturgically, technically, in terms of content, economics. He was an innovator not only of Brno, but also of Czech and world ballet. Choreographed, choreographer Dvořák wants to work innovatively with classical ballet technique and discover its possible new meaning, expression and dramatic content. The space between pure dance abstraction and dramatic expression or storytelling will be the playing field of the final performance of Psota.
The structure of the performance will be mosaic, it is a feeling of personality. The chamber project involves composer and DJ Jan Hanák Sonority, who has already prepared the music for the performances Ema Destinn, Ondina, Ludwig B. and Haas: Days of Fame. He will work electronically with versions of compositions by, among others, Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. The author of the costumes is Jindra Rychlá.
The aim of the project is to bring dance artists of a wide age range to the stage. Therefore, Dvořák approached Jana Kosíková Přibylová and also students of TK Brno to cooperate with the Emeritus Primary Ballerina of the National Theater Brno.
