Celestial Odyssey

Celestial Odyssey: A galactic concert for the eyes. The harpsichord voyages through the stratosphere like a spaceship, cosmic ballerinas mutate into antennaed robots and the lighting design creates the illusion of infinite space. Celestial Odyssey uniquely combines dancer Andrea Miltnerová’s choreography with the virtuosity of harpsichordist Monika Knoblochová, raising her music, which oscillates between baroque and contemporary, to the same level as dance. The minimalist choreography is finely chiselled and every detail plays a decisive role in the abstract tale of this cosmic story. The dancers’ dual movements are precise and strangely mysterious, like the orbits and ellipses of cosmic bodies. The robotic creatures in masks never establish themselves in time and space, but only pass through it, or appear in various episodic situations; through their actions, they stimulate the viewer’s imagination, inviting them to create their own interpretation. Movement, music, sound and light come together as if one component cannot exist without the other, and this connection captures the meaning of all that is playing out on stage. The voyaging harpsichord and the lighting design constantly reshape the spatial scenography. It is truly remarkable how the ‘floating’ harpsichordist can focus so unwaveringly on such virtuosic compositions and reveal such musical artistry in this unstable environment. The lighting design is not programmed, but controlled manually, allowing the lights to ‘live’ and react spontaneously and dynamically within the structure of the performance.

About the company

The artistic duo of director, lighting and sound designer Jan Komárek and dancer and choreographer Andrea Miltnerová has been creating together for over ten years. Their joint work is a combination of the instinctive creative adventurer and aesthete and the perfectionist in search of the impossible, tinged by a whiff of nostalgia and a ‘touch of class’. Movement, light and sound are inseparable in their work and created together.

Their creations include:
‘Dance of the Magnetic Ballerina’, selected by the prestigious European network Aerowaves as one of their priority performances for 2013 and, along with ‘Fractured’, has toured extensively throughout Europe to critical acclaim.
‘Tranzmutation’, recipient of the international Move-Award 2016 quality label, has toured to the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain.
‘Counterpoint’, winner of the 2017 Laban Prize.
‘Kabaret Velazquez’, which was invited to the National Theatre of Israel in 2018.
They have also created several site-specific works, including ‘Dance of the Paper Dancers’ for the Czech Museum of Music and the National Museum in Prague, ‘Kampa Sonata’ for the Prague Quadrennial and ‘Light Underground’ for the City of Prague Gallery.

For this creation, Andrea chose to collaborate with eminent Czech harpsichordist Monika Knoblochová, whose expertise lies in both the baroque and contemporary repertoire. She is the recipient of many prizes: laureate of the Prague Spring International Harpsichord Competition, the 16th Grosser Förderpreiswettbewerb Munich, the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Prize, the Bohuslav Martinů Society Prize and the Czech Davidoff Prix. Monika regularly performs as a soloist and chamber player at home and abroad. She records for Czech Radio and has recorded a wide spectrum of CDs for Supraphon, Cube Bohemia, Nibiru and Radioservis.

Awards

International Jury Award of the Czech Dance Platform 2022 for the performance Celestial Odyssey; International Jury Special Mention of the Czech Dance Platform 2022 for Celestial Odyssey’s harpsichordist: Monika Knoblochová