Wim Vandekeybus & Ultima Vez - Talk to the Demon

World famous dance company Ultima Vez will present the pre-premiere of its new performance Talk to the Demon in Prague. In this project Flemish choreographer Wim Vandekeybus examines how social networks and media affect the emotions and thoughts of children, how children use these media, and how they are in turn used and even abused by it. The performance will feature two ten-year-old children, six dancers, and actor Jerry Killick (a member of renowned British theatre company Forced Entertainment). The world pre-premiere of Talk to the Demon will take place as part of the celebrations of the 20th season of the Archa Theatre. Ultima Vez has regularly appeared at Archa since 1995. This time the Archa Theatre is co-producing the new performance together with the Royal Flemish Theatre. The performance will be completed during a weeklong residence in Prague and local audiences will have the chance to see the performance before the rest of the world.

Wim Vandekeybus founded Ultima Vez in 1986. His work is characterized by radical movement theatre that overlaps daringly with other artistic genres. This isn't the first time Vandekeybus has worked with children. "For Talk to the Demon, I wanted to work with just one child at a time, to research the presence of a child in an adult performance," says Vandekeybus. "Immediately the child has a big sense of irony towards the rest of the crew, it can be flexible and mingle with them and become one of them. It is very natural and more uncontrolled, but that is the beauty and the sensitivity of it. It is not a political performance but a personal one. General wisdoms, mistakes and clichés can be questioned by reversing the roles."

In the performance he explores the power of innocence and the impact of social networks and media on children's thinking and emotions. Unlike many of his previous choreographies, in which he worked with different sounds and musical accompaniment, here he explores silence and its possibilities in the context of the theatre. The demons in the title refer to the dark side in each of us, in adults, in children, and in the audience. "They are invisible and yet they manipulate our state of being", says Vandekeybus.

This year Archa continues the project of one-off audience exchanges between Prague and Dresden and welcomes audiences from the Hellerau Theatre in Dresden to the performance of Talk to the Demon. The audience mobility project has been in operation since 2012 under the auspices of the European project Theatron.