Jana Tereková / bees-R: ABNORMAL REPETITIVE BEHAVIOUR (Slovak Dance Platform 2023)

When animals are deprived of their natural environment, locked in inappropriate spaces, in a ZOO, circus, or laboratory, they tend to develop abnormal repetitive behaviors. Picking at nothing, floating limbs, head banging, head waving, pacing, or dancing are the names that scientists have given to the stereotypical movements of animals in captivity. In her new creation, Jana Tereková creates weird, possessed, alienated, troubled and troubling bodies which are able to turn into calm bodies instantly, stretching out time, doing nothing or too less, carrying out rituals without apparent sense, inefficient and unnecessary. They draw the spectator into a strange universe that fascinates, hypnotizes, where time seems suspended. The beings on the stage are distant yet intimately familiar. They are animals, imaginary creatures, objects, humans. The work can be received as an ironic and bitter action in the face of general inaction, ignorance and arrogance. And as a praise of long time and boredom, creating a counterweight to the world obsessed with utility and efficiency that has reduced nature and non human animals in consumer goods.

“In her works, choreographer and dancer Jana Tereková systematically exploresthe dancing body, the limits of dance, movement structures. Dancers are provoked to work against their emblematic movement, thus she eagerly revises the dance vocabulary and incites a discussion on the development and character of dance with her creations. By focusing on artistic research and reflecting merely scientific subjects, she is quite unique in the context of the Slovak dance scene. Her most recent work Abnormal Repetitive Behaviour, is a beautiful example of this – the starting point for new dance material is the movement of animals held in long-term captivity.”

(Michaela Pašteková)