CZECH REPUBLIC
Miřenka Čechová is one of the most fascinating interpreters of contemporary and physical theater in the Czech Republic. She is a producer and a performer, choreographer, university professor and a writer. As a multidisciplinary artist she has been a part of the TED Conference in Prague and was a program director of the Czech Center in New York. She is the co-founder of two companies, “Spitfire Company” and “TanteLab” where she works with independent, multidisciplinary artists. Her creative literary work consists of two books: “Miss AmeriKa” (2018) and “Ballerinas” (2020).
Miřenka graduated from the Dance Conservatory in Prague, majoring in classical ballet and she also followed alternative theater and nonverbal theater studies, achieving two Master’s degrees. In 2012 she achieved a Ph.D. status in the field of physical and mime theater production. As a Fulbright scholarship recipient she spent some time in Washington, USA where she also taught physical theater. She has founded a new direction into physical theater, combining physical and theater dance. She has written and participated in more than twenty stage projects in the Czech Republic and the USA which experiment with different expressions and for her work she has been recognized with a number of awards and acknowledgements. At the moment, she lives alternately in Prague and New York. She is currently working on theater projects for children’s palliative care and writing a new book about the human body.
Both of her published literary works have served as the base for staged dance performances. “Miss AmeriKa” (2018) served as the base for a new theater performance which was later nominated for the “Thalia” award – acknowledgement given to the best theater actors in the Czech Republic. In 2022 the novel “Ballerinas” received its dramatization and a premier of a multimedia stage project which combines animation, film, live music and ballet. This project is popular in the repertoire of the “Palace Akropolis” theater in Prague. For this book, Čechová was nominated for the European Union Prize for Literature and Theater Newspaper award for publication achievement.
“When you are a child, you don’t understand certain things that are happening to you as extreme – so you basically accept whatever is happening to you. The extreme becomes “extreme” much later, when you are maybe an adult and you see the situation from a distance.”
Baletky (Ballerinas)
Translation: Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser
"Antolog", Skopje, 2023
This novel explores the controversies surrounding classical ballet education and practice. Based on the author's personal experience, the story unfolds around the schooling of a young girl at a ballet conservatory in Prague in the 1990s. The independence at an early age, the challenges of the big city, the sacrifices for the desired ideal, the constant physical and mental effort, the strict and incomplete education, the daily starvation, drugs and alcohol... It turns out that the sublime ballet game has a poignant background. The publishing of this book has caused a series of debates in the ballet world in the Czech Republic and provoked contradictory reactions among the readership: some condemn it for denigrating classical ballet, while others see it as an impetus for a serious rethinking of the practice of this art.