A Major Digitisation Project Planned for the Year 2025.

The Pavel Šmok Endowment Fund and Institute continues its activities in 2025. This year is crucial for us, and not only because it marks the anniversary of the Prague Chamber Ballet. Moreover, we have been granted a substantial financial contribution for the complete cataloguing and digitisation of the physical archives for both ensembles. This will allow us to complete a large part of our work this year, i.e. preserving the work of Pavel Šmok and the Ballet Prague and Prague Chamber Ballet ensembles and making it available to general public.

We will catalogue and digitise several thousand items of printed materials, articles, reviews, production leaflets, promotional prints, manuscript notes and supporting documents of all kinds, as well as several thousand photographs; from hundreds of audiovisual materials, the “best of” will be selected for in-house study at our headquarters in Braník. Once the first phase is complete, all these items should be safely stored in both physical and digital form. By the end of the year, most of these materials will be included in our Ballet Prague Heritage database, which should be in turn improved through an innovative solution.

The project “BALLET PRAGUE HERITAGE – digitisation of the archives of Studio Ballet Prague and Prague Chamber Ballet”, reg. no. 0443000086 received financial support from the National Restoration Plan.

The first half of the 2025/2026 season will be dedicated to recalling the history of the Prague Chamber Ballet. At its inception stood Pavel Šmok, whose tenacious efforts attracted other enthusiasts willing to pursue and dance for a common cause whatever the circumstances. Jan Klár and Vladimír Kloubek were the first two, and so the history began at the Prague

City Theatres. We consider the show How to Make a Ballet performed on 19 November 1975 as the moment when the Prague Chamber Ballet was born. As the tradition goes, we will present a new exhibition for the anniversary. Once again, this will be a visually captivating moving exhibition installed on panels. Follow us throughout the year!