13th Bazaar Festival of Central and Eastern European performance

Bazaar Festival 2027: What Flows through the Body, What Flows through the World

This annual Prague festival focuses on independent innovating dance and theatre artists specifically in countries spanning from the Baltics through Central Europe to the Balkans, always asking: what common themes can be found in such diverse countries?In 2027 the festival theme is: What Flows through the Body, What Flows through the World

AI, the internet, and social media are flooding our attention with an endless ‘stream’ of communication channels, work messages, advertising, and entertainment ‘flowing’ onto our devices and into our living spaces. Central and East European makers of live performances are responding to this deluge of information with work that puts it on pause for a moment, or redirects it elsewhere. Or, conversely, they drink it in and immerse themselves in it totally, to find out for us where it is all leading...

At the same time, there has been a sharp rise in the number of independent dance and performance makers exploring actual streams in their work: the currents of water around us, beneath us and within us. Perhaps they want to feel at one with nature, or perhaps they simply long for a simpler kind of flow or current – one that we can truly feel physically on our own skin - or in our mouths – a flow that soothes and cools, stirs and guides. 

When we look even more closely at artists’ works and processes, deeper connections began to ‘surface’. Water, information, history, ideas, impulses and identities flow through us, not just around us: circulating in currents and eddies, flushing things out of us, but also nourishing and propelling us, leaving traces within us, vanishing into our depths only to rush back in our consciences again, all the while connecting us to one another, as well as to the elements and to the non-human world.

One thing is certain – these artists have engaged with these phenomena and approached them with artistic rigour and incredible ingenuity. Audiences who take the time to attend at least three of the selected productions and events here – and allow themselves to be carried along by the river’s current under the guidance of these artists from Central and Eastern Europe – might come to a personal, visceral understanding of the forces that flow through us and around us. The artists whose work we are following this year do not approach these themes from a distance – they explore them through their own bodies, communities and everyday realities. Through their practices and research, they are able to reflect on broader contexts with extraordinary sensitivity and insight.

What is particularly striking is how often their work returns to the very foundation of our experience – the body that perceives, feels, thinks and acts. Through contemporary dance, physical theatre and other forms of performing arts that place the body at the centre of understanding, artists from Central and Eastern Europe are asking: How does my body relate to the whole? How does it all work? How are we connected? Where are we heading?