SE.S.TA CENTRE FOR CHOREOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT

We connect different areas of the movement arts with other creative and artistic disciplines as well as fields and industries outside the arts. Meetings between experts – choreographers with curators, dancers with architects, performers with hip hop dancers, acrobats with industrial technologists, historians with ecologists – lead to the exchange of know-how and initiate new collaborations. We help people transcend the horizons of their fields to make remarkable connections. New points of view = new solutions.

SE.S.TA is part of many international networks and most of our projects involve foreign and Czech partners working side by side. Artists benefit from the opportunities to network and showcase themselves, while audiences from the capital and regions enjoy contact with international artists at the KoresponDance Festival in Prague, Žďár nad Sázavou and our newest location, Nové Město na Moravě.

In Žďár nad Sázavou in particular, SE.S.TA offers a unique combination of historical architecture with a rich genus loci and the chance to collaborate with local communities. The work of artists enlivens the landscape, town, factory or industrial space. As a result, unique site-specific projects are created, in which art intersects with the expertise of local specialists. Creatives work with youth, seniors and communities of amateur dancers and the results of these collaborations often have international implications. We support projects that have something to offer to our unique space and community.

We aim to address the inhibitions and even fears that people can sometimes experience when encountering the movement arts. We demonstrate that rational understanding isn’t always necessary, though we can help spectators develop that understanding. Through post-show discussions, Choreographic Cafés or Choreographic Fora, artists reveal the creative process and their inspirations. The KoresponDance Festival is proof of the fact that demanding and audience-friendly works can sit side-by-side in a single program. We are open to all genres and styles – quality new circus or street dance are an accessible gateway to the movement arts.

We understand theory as a creative tool for artists to reflect on their intuitive impulses and transform them into an artistically communicable form. For SE.S.TA, theory emerges from practice – from the real needs of artists in relation to specific projects – so that it can find its way back into practice and be embodied in specific works of art.