Who we are?

Temporary Collective is a performance-making group. Temporary Collective is dancer Tereza Ondrová and theatre director Petra Tejnorová. We are a duo, bringing together a team of creatives from various disciplines to make performances and encounters with the public.

Our artistic process is built through dialogue and in response to what challenges us. Recent topics in our work deal with sustainability, loss and geographical narrative, while also exploring the humorful and heartfelt. We are temporary because we do not hold fixed beliefs, preferring to welcome change and practice reinvention and relations with the unknown.

Temporary Collective also includes collaborators Monica Gillette (dramaturg), Sodja Lotker (dramaturg and curator), Julia Pecková (production), Daniela Řeháková (production), Dominik Žižka and Marek Bartoš (video & photo documentation), among others.

Let’s collaborate…

GEO
(Currently touring)

A solo for Tereza Ondrová that relates her 21 year history of creating and performing at PONEC theatre in Prague to the geological history of the surrounding landscape and ground below. GEO brings into focus the overlapping archives of her own body, her repertoire, the history of the theatre and the land it stands on.

GEO LOCAL
(To be made in collaboration with you)

GEO LOCAL is an adapted version of GEO, made specific to your theatre and geographical landscape in collaboration with a local performer with whom you have a longstanding relationship with. GEO LOCAL brings to the stage the interconnected relationship between artist, land and institution on both a personal and historical level. Some questions that interest us for the process are, What was the identity of the building before it became a performance space? What is the story of the land below? How do the thematics of a dancer’s repertoire relate to the history of the building and the ground it stands on? How can geological narratives of the ground below a live performance combine with a performer’s own personal biography to provide new empathy for a more sustainable future?

CALL ALICE (Currently touring)

Two women, both dancers, both the same age, are said to have a remarkable physical resemblance. At first, they have no idea about each other, maybe they just heard that everyone has a double somewhere. Is it possible to find answers through another person? Call Alice is an intimate duet that is and is not a solo by dancer Tereza Ondrová, dealing with themes of loss and reconstruction. Call Alice was selected for the international platform Aerowaves Twenty22 and received the Czech Dance Platform Award in 2022.

ONE GESTURE (To be made in collaboration with you)

CALL ALICE is a duet with someone missing. It became a solo following the loss of the collaborating performer during the creation of the work. In that period TEMPORARY COLLECTIVE generated new strategies for creation, bringing to stage an award-winning work that missed half of the team who initiated it. The idea for ONE GESTURE is to bring the movement material from the opening solo of CALL ALICE to young dancers (ca. 16-25 years old) in a workshop format that would build towards a performance. The idea of a solo with someone who is not there will provide ground for reflection and creation on the topic of loss and what happens when important parts of our lives come to an end. Interest will be placed on how loss can transform beyond being a sign of collapse, decline or extinction, and how it can offer an incentive to create something new. The work with the young dancers will be in generating material that can animate and generate a different dynamic force and quality to what has been frozen, static or painful.

Both GEO LOCAL and ONE GESTURE are connected by the idea of working with what already exists, rather than constantly generating anew. Through visiting and working with past material, TEMPORARY COLLECTIVE works with the concept of degrowth, asking us all to rethink and re-evaluate our working methods. In this way we hope to bring greater focus on topics of sustainability on a personal, professional and environmental level and we welcome collaboration with anyone who is interested to take on these topics with us.

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Currently touring repertoire

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Call Alice

“The unusual format of a documentary solo, or if you prefer, a duet with an absent alter ego… brings a unique perception and reading of the dance performance.” Kristina Soukopová, Nov 26, 2021

Call Alice was selected for the international platform Aerowaves Twenty22 and received the Czech Dance Platform Award in 2022.

Same Same

Petra Tejnorová and Tereza Ondrová, director and dancer together on the stage, are interested in finding the boundaries of subtle humour, irony and absurdity, while respecting the complexity of human relationships, underlined by the directorial and choreographic guidance of Karine Ponties.

“SAME SAME impresses with how much creativity and imagination has been derived from a seemingly droll topic tackled with gusto and humour that leaves one with a smile. Freedom is at the heart of what SAME SAME wants you to leave with, and with how effectively they’ve presented their form of physical theatre, it well and truly makes you want to get up and dance like no one’s watching the next time you find yourself on the verge of a breakdown in your office cubicle.” Bakchormeeboy, 23. 1. 2024

The performance received Special Mention and Tereza Ondrová received Best Dancer of the Year at the 2019 Czech Dance Platform.

INSECTUM in…

What would life look like if we saw it from the perspective of an insect? How can we change the anthropocentric view of the world? Tereza Ondrová, in cooperation with Silvia Gribaudi, offers the answers through their bodies and with their humour.

“Gribaudi’s body-positive approach and Ondrová’s versatility offer a much-needed, light-hearted performative approach that contrasts with the predominant conceptualism of contemporary dance-making.” Ariadne Mikou, Sept 13, 2022

GEO

A solo for Tereza Ondrová that relates her 21 year history of creating and performing at PONEC theatre in Prague to the geological history of the surrounding landscape and ground below, bringing into focus the overlapping archives of her own body, her repertoire and the land the theatre stands on.

“Tereza once again proves her key strength through dance: the ability to give essential attention to detail and to highlight… small gestures, movements (even if only with her eyes), as if she were patiently embroidering a large canvas with tiny stitches, to leave its observers awestruck – if they are willing to walk the path of small steps and turns together with her, to give small gestures great meaning.” Jana Bohutinská, Oct 17, 2023

DUETS

How to be together? What does it mean to understand each other nowadays? This performance goes beyond traditional boundaries, bringing together the art of movement and the spirit of encounters first in a workshop and then a performance by and with the local community. In the workshop we invite the local residents to examine their ideas and prejudices and support the ability to perceive closeness and sympathy. We create editions of DUETS for each locality, co-working with pre-existing communities, such as LGBTI+, the elderly, and people dealing with disabilities, among others.

“Part theatre, part social experimentation and part art therapy, the presence of the audience is not necessary for the fulfilment of the meaning of what the performers set in motion. The performance can be seen as a study of the phenomenon of encounters, pieced together as individual real-life examples.” Lucie Kocourková, Dec 23, 2019

SILENT

The audio performance for a group of audience members in a public space consists of movement instructions for the body and mind. SILENT responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on public space, closed borders and the inability to travel and the vulnerabilities our bodies endured in that period.
Voice choreography created by Tereza Ondrová, Masako Matsushita, Ingvild Isaksen, Petra Hauerová, Sally E. Dean, Fredrik Petrov, Jonathan Ibsen.

“Silent offers a strange but deeply profound experience. It brings one to a halt, focusing on one-self, but at the same time a feeling of belonging with others that has been so tarnished in the past months.”
Kristína Soukupová, Oct 5, 2021