A documentary about the transformation of the body and soul of a dancer on the threshold of “dance retirement”.
Václav Kuneš’s journey from his dance beginnings through a stellar international career to “dance retirement”. He is considered an ace choreographer in the dance world. He was a dancer at Nederlands Dans Theater and also danced as a soloist at the New National Theater in Tokyo. He worked as an assistant to Jiří Kilián, staging his choreographies in many famous theatres around the world. He became known to the general public in the Czech Republic as “the most worthy judge” of the StarDance dance competition.
Documentary filmmaker Slobodanka Radun uses the story of Václav Kuneš to show how a dancer’s body functions after decades of hard training. Václav Kuneš comes to the realisation that from a certain age a dancer cannot do what a colleague 20 years younger can do, but he can still cultivate his experience and share it with the audience. Václav Kuneš says about ageing: “I always thought that when I turn 40 my life will change. I stop dancing because I wouldn’t be able to dance so well as I used to. But now my life is changing because I’m discovering that that’s not the case.”
Václav Kuneš, founder of the renowned dance company 420PEOPLE, is therefore today coming up with an original project for “aging” dancers called 42+PEOPLE. He was inspired not only by his own age, but also by Jiří Kylián’s former company Nederlands Dans Theater 3, which he says was also designed for dancers “between 40 and death”.
