Frekvence

Let the body speak!
This project reveals the often invisible physical impacts and internal responses of the body during a performance. It explores the complex relationship between the body, mind, and technology, offering a thought-provoking and intense experience for both the audience and the performer.

Frekvence touches on the body’s physical reactions and the emotions that respond to both external and internal stimuli. What happens when we feel nothing at all when everything is frozen and emotions fade away?
And what happens when we experience an extreme physical and emotional rollercoaster with no sense of where it may lead?
Is there a difference between what we see and what is truly happening inside the body?

These themes are rooted in the performer’s personal experiences, which the audience is invited to witness and share, entering her inner and outer world alongside her.

In Frekvence, Betka Tichá uses technology that monitors bodily functions—measuring her heart rate directly during the performance, both on the ground and in aerial acrobatics. The data collected from her body connects in real time with sound and light, which respond to her physical and emotional state. The entire performance is therefore fully synchronized with her body, creating an intimate and dynamic portrait of human perception and emotion.

Cadavre exquis or Exquisite Corpse refers to a surrealist game in which words or images are composed and assembled in a chain of random associations with the intention of disrupting logical and causal reasoning. In this dance performance, the principle of cadavre exquis proposes a specific way of perceiving. What can arise? A hybrid creature, new being – the consequence of the collective subconscious. A metaphor for a shapeshifting human who finds their self in multiple identities.

The word itself cadavre – corpse – evokes a body without identity, nameless matter, a zero point. The movement becomes a scream, bizarre, grotesque, terrifying, a liberating struggle for existence. Body memory creates its own narrative space from which images, gestures and dynamic traces of movement emerge.

The choreography is freely inspired by the surrealist visions of Toyen (1902-1980), born Marie Čermínová, a Czech avant-garde artist. Who or what is Toyen? Spectre, beast, restlessness, wasteland, caught in the trap of reality. The experience of physicality and the inner tension of Toyen’s dreamlike paintings are the foundation for a specific movement vocabulary that transfers the references from Toyen’s work into an abstract dance form. Cadavre exquis explores various body states, awakens the imagination, reveals new meanings and leaves room for interpretation.

The solo processes the pressures of contemporary life while following the example of the Surrealists – it provokes a state in which reality and dream, present and past, obvious and obscured merge into one reality.