Press Release: News from the Pavel Šmok Institute: Two-day Workshop, New Monograph, and Mobile Exhibition

Prague, April 26, 2024 – In 2024, the Pavel Šmok Institute in Braník continues to offer access to its video library with a study room containing an archive of printed materials, photographs, and a video collection of choreographies. It also continues to organize regular educational lectures, screenings, and discussions for professionals and the general public, both at the Dance Art Centre and in the small hall of the Municipal Library in Prague. In the near future, the PSI is preparing to publish a new book, organize an exhibition, and hold a workshop for professionals.

The archive of digitized printed materials, photographs, and other types of documents covering the period of the Ballet Prague ensemble and Pavel Šmok’s work in Basel is continuously accessible not only in the study room with a video library at the Dance Art Centre, but also in the online database Ballet Prague Heritage (www.balletprague-heritage.cz). This year, the Institute will make available further archival materials from the period of the Prague Chamber Ballet, whose history began in 1975.

At the end of May, the IPŠ is preparing a specialized two-day workshop entitled How to Capture the Memory of Dance. “As a private memory institution, we want to meet with colleagues from other organizations and experts from abroad, so we decided to organize such a meeting in Prague at the House of Dance Arts,” says the Institute’s director, Ladislava Dunovská Jandová, presenting the Institute’s other activities. The two-day event will take place on May 27 and 28 and will be attended by specialists in the creation and management of theater and dance archives. “We are expecting guests from Slovakia, Germany, and the Netherlands. The program will be designed as lectures and presentations, but our main goal is to actually meet, get to know each other, and share our work. We deal with similar problems, so we want to draw inspiration from experienced researchers and larger institutions, such as the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln, and open the meeting to other interested parties. Our topics include cataloging systems, digitization and storage of digital data, cyber security, and database software solutions,” explains IPŠ activity coordinator Lucie Kocourková.

As part of the series “Studio Balet Praha and Pražský komorní balet – History and Personalities,” a monograph is planned to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the important choreographer and former artistic director of Studio Balet Praha, Luboš Ogoun. The authors of the publication are Kateřina Šalounová and Lucie Kocourková, and the book launch will take place in November 2024. “The book will commemorate an important choreographer who, together with Pavel Šmok, was instrumental in shaping the modern face of Czech ballet. It is important to analyze the works of prominent personalities and to recall their artistic views, because only continuity with the past nourishes the artistic creation of the present,” emphasizes Lucie Kocourková.

Last but not least, the Institute is also planning a mobile exhibition in Czech and English to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of Ballet Prague Studio (1964–2024) on six double-sided mobile panels. The traveling exhibition will be on display from the new season during performances by the Prague Chamber Ballet in Prague at the Vinohrady Theater and as part of tours throughout the Czech Republic.

The Pavel Šmok Institute, in cooperation with the Association of Dance Artists of the Czech Republic, is also participating in the realization of the exhibition “Kůra-Němeček-Ogoun 100” on the occasion of the significant anniversary of three prominent creators and founders of post-war ballet in Czechoslovakia, who devoted their talent and creative energies to dance, the development of theater, and left behind a very rich legacy.