Berlin-based choreographer Isabelle Schad to open Bazaar Festival. The collective body as a probe into the ties that bind us

The twelfth edition of the Bazaar Festival will open on 12 March at Studio Hrdinů with a performance by one of the distinctive voices of European choreography, Isabelle Schad. Her work Pieces and Elements introduces this year’s theme, Human and More-than-Human Communities, through the image of a collective body—an organism that can exist only as a whole.

Berlin-based choreographer Isabelle Schad approaches the theme through the image of the collective body as an organism capable of existing only as a whole. A group of seven performers forms a shifting structure in which every individual movement resonates through the group and shapes its further development. Schad has long explored the relationship between the body, choreography, and community, and her influence is also visible in the Central European context. Connections to her artistic and pedagogical practice can be seen, for example, in the work of choreographers already known to Bazaar Festival audiences—Alica Minar (Lush Blast, last year’s programme) and Zsuzsa Rozsavölgyi (Old Pond, presented at Bazaar Festival 2021).

The festival’s opening is therefore not only the presentation of a major international figure, but also a return to the roots of an aesthetic and conceptual current that has shaped an entire generation of contemporary artists. At the same time, it stands as a manifesto of this year’s dramaturgical direction: the idea that community is not a metaphor, but a physical experience.

“One of the leitmotifs we have observed in recent years in works by dancers and theatre-makers from Central and Eastern Europe is precisely the question of how and why we come together, how we accept or exclude others, and how groups of individuals become something else,” says festival dramaturg Ewan MacLaren. “In a time of global upheaval, we open a space for audiences to encounter works by Central European artists who sensitively explore the fragile ties that hold us together—between people themselves and between humans and nature.”

Balkan and Slovak works as a sensitive barometer of the present

A prominent and dramaturgically important line of this year’s programme focuses on artists from the wider “Balkan” region. Their work has long reflected—both sensitively and uncompromisingly—questions of collective identity, power, trust, and resistance. Here, the Balkans are not merely a geographic reference but a barometer of the present: a place where transformations of communities, systems, and relationships can be read with particular intensity. The Balkans are not the theme—they are a perspective through which we can observe how contemporary communities are formed, fractured, and reassembled.

A major project involving both professional and amateur performers is the durational performance Monument of Trust: The Arena by Ivana Ivković. The Serbian visual and performance artist explores how disrupted trust becomes inscribed in bodies, social structures, and collective consciousness—for example through corruption. The Arena is not simply a performance but a situation: a tense space between performers and audience where the boundaries of collective action, conformity, and resistance are tested.

In the context of current civic protests in Serbia and the broader radicalisation of European society, the project gains an urgent social dimension without losing its physical and performative power. Czech audiences will also have the opportunity to encounter Ivković’s work for the first time.

The Arena is created in collaboration with the platform Y Events from Divadlo X10, which has long worked at the intersection of theatre and visual art. The joint evening will transform the theatre space into a literal arena—a site of collective tension, confrontation, and shared responsibility. This collaboration underlines the festival’s ambition to create connections between scenes and contexts and to strengthen the communal dimension of contemporary performance art.

The Balkan line continues with the company of Croatian choreographer Sonja Pregrad, a resident artist of the early Bazaar Festivals and a key figure of the Zagreb dance scene. In the project O, the artists turn their attention to plant communities and challenge an anthropocentric view of the world.

Slovak choreographer Juraj Korec presents the sci-fi dance project PRÍBEH, which explores the relationship between humans, algorithms, and a collapsing world order—not only on a global scale but also in a context that feels close to Czech and Slovak audiences. Before the performance, the organisers invite audiences to a short but stimulating discussion in which figures from Slovak and Czech sci-fi alongside the choreographer of PRÍBEH will explore the most current perspectives on Slovak dystopias and utopias—not only within the literary genre. Invited guests include editor, cultural anthropologist, and political scientist Magda Dušková, Slovak sci-fi writer and journalist (Denník N) Michal Hvorecký, and choreographer Juraj Korec.

A minisymposium that connects – dance as shared practice

One of the key moments of this year’s edition is the Saturday minisymposium Whose Dance Is My Dance?, which approaches the idea of community through dance as a living, shared practice. It is not a side programme but a direct extension of the festival’s theme: who does dance belong to, who creates it, who adopts it—and which communities carry it forward?

Together with dance artists, educators, and researchers from Afro-American dance communities as well as from Central and Eastern Europe, the concept of community will be explored as a key to understanding the roots of dance, its memory, and its future possibilities. Appropriation, history, everyday practice, and shared experience become tools for collective reflection on dance as a space of encounter, resistance, and collaboration. In this way, the minisymposium shifts the festival’s theme from the stage into direct dialogue. Community is not represented here—it comes into being.

“We do not want to see the festival simply as a showcase of works. It is a space where communities are not only represented but also formed—and above all, where they meet,” adds Ewan MacLaren.

Bazaar Festival is a space for open dialogue. It invites everyone who asks (sometimes seemingly simple) questions but is not satisfied with simple or straightforward answers. More information and the full programme are available at www.bazaarfestival.cz