Dancer, choreographer and performer, the founder of SKOK!, Mr Viňarský studied, between 1996 and 2001 ballet choreography at The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, to continue his studies in dance choreography at The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
From 1998 to 2000 he was member of the professional Štúdio tanca dance theatre in Banská Bystrica. At the time he worked as performer with a number of international choreographers, such as Simone Sandroni, Julyen Hamilton, Irene Stamou and Frey Faust. He then placed the core of his work to Prague.
His first solo project Sorton earned him, in 2001, the second prize at The Jarmila Jeřábková International Choreography Competition in Prague. In the same year he founded, together with Tomáš Krivošík, the dance group DuWadance. They developed the successful projects Inner laws and, in 2002, A Little Parable. In 2003 they premièred the joint evening consisting of two solo projects, Blown Away Song and Tea never brewed, which earned them the second prize at the 2003 Jarmila Jeřábková International Choreography Competition in Prague. For his solo project The Last Step Before he received in 2006 the prestigious Czech award Cena SAZKY on in the category Discovery in Dance along with the Spectators’ Award at the Czech Dance Platform. In collaboration with the Grotowski Institute he created, in 2007 male quartet Paisyn.
Since 2004 he has been closely collaborating with the French–Belgian dancer and choreographer Karine Ponties. The output of their mutually inspiring creative relationship includes, for instance, the projects Mi Non Sabir (2004), Holeulone, that received the Belgian critics’ award for best dance performance in 2017, Havran (2008) and Humus Vertebra (2009).
Mr Viňarský is laureate of the prestigious New York Dance and Performance Awards / The Bessies 2013 in the category Outstanding Performer for the project The Painted Bird / Bastard as choreographed by New York-based Slovak artist Pavol Zuštiak. As performing artist and co-author he participated in the Slovak–Bulgarian project Kalbo (2011) as directed by Petar Todorov. With the Czech director Petra Tejnorová he created a number of exceptional and artistically progressive productions, such as LIFEshow, My Funny Games, Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their most recent joint project, You Are Here, is a guide through the presence and human relationships. In 2017 You Are Here received the Spectators’ Award at the Czech Dance Platform.
In 2011 Mr Viňarský founded the group SKOK! dedicated to the promotion of Slovak contemporary dance and its accessibility to wide public through lectures, workshops and other activities. He closely collaborates with the culture centre Station Žilina-Záriečie and Záhrada – Centre for Independent Culture in Banská Bystrica. Along with his choreographic activities he recently runs dance masterclasses for professional dancers and, particularly for non-professional dancers and other professionals.
Signature style:
Jaro Viňarský finds impulses for his work in complex intellectual, often currently challenging themes. With his distinctive ease he transforms them into physical language. Noble philosophical views communicate in his choreographies with spectators using passionate language of bare muscles and tendons in advanced and overexposed positions. He exceptionally links the vulnerability and virtually unlimited body potential with intellectual subtext of the productions. In his choreographies and as performing artist, he often embodies the beauty of spirit and body in uncompromising nudity. He then confronts physical and mental nakedness with philosophical definitions to ultimately make them mutually inseparable. Mr Viňarský’s art is epitomised by sparkling and stimulating ease, witty sense of humour and detachment when working with multi-layered intellectual themes. When creating dance librettos, he refrains from additional comments. Instead, he focuses the choreography on the key topic which he places into the context of raw being and fragility of tenderness.
The close and long collaboration between Mr Viňarský and Ms Ponties bore fruit in the production of The Last Step Before that opened in première in 2004 at the Duncan Centre in Prague.
On The Last Step Before Mr Viňarský plays out the game of subjection and resistance to gravity, and of the variation of the possibilities of physical principles. For dreams and desires, gravity is a need, a barrier and inevitability at the same time. Mr Viňarský’s vertical line resists anchoring and finds itself on the brink of being off-axis. It is the runway for take-off, to the core of one’s own personality. The deviations from the body axis and assumption of its control offer a dramatic story of identification and identification of a fixed point. The decision to free oneself is captured in at the instant just prior to the implementation, with the awareness that thing shall never be the same the second time round. The set is made of a light cone, a dancer in red costume embraced by darkness penetrated by jumps and dramatic gestures. Mr Viňarský explored the unique moment, which, though undefined, doesn’t as yet have its history. Nonetheless, it already gives a reason to sense the power of the consequences to follow. The choreographer accelerates the spiral of the motion trajectories in stoppage. He composes breaks in which he attempts to grasp, reverse and control the next step. The options are limited by the laws of physics and out own humanity. The Archimedean fixed point that is to move the Earth disappears in the darkness into which the dancer steps out. The solo is specific given its inventive lighting design. The Czech lighting designer Pavel Kotlík in collaboration with Mr Viňarský create the tightest possible connection of lights and movement where darkness is the anchoring dramaturgical element and the space for illusion as well.
Mr Viňarský’s solo project Fool’s figures is an ambiguous an apparently vague story of a fool. His image is presented in the variability of multiple portrayals. The contrast and, at the same time the identifying feature of the fool is the character of the king in which, as if by chance he finds himself in the state of the exaggerated mental imbalance. Viňarský’s fool isn’t a prototype of a madman in a psychiatric clinic, but of the fool we have within, whom we are aware of and whose madness we consciously keep under control. Mr Viňarský repeatedly steps onto the shaky ground of improvisation in dynamic, ever-changing work. None of the repeat performances of the production is the same. What changes is the music, lights and the set. Mr Viňarský always experiments anew with the limits of his own movement vocabulary. In his interpretation, the fool resists capture, analysis and definition. He climbs the ladder to the spire / throne, he balances on the top, he is tied to it by chain and runs around like a mad dog. If he happens to be anchored in a moderate form, it will be the moment when one can request the royal audience.
Fool’s figures is a story of a determined and conscious crossing of inner limits of sanity.
The performance – duet ANIMALINSIDE is based on an eponymous literary master by the Hungarian author László Krásznahorkai and the painting by the German painter Max Neumann. It is a spontaneous physical picture of an animal in man. It is about the endeavour to grasp the free and native inner world of emotions and instincts. ANIMALINSIDE is a portrait of understanding between two people who share acceptance of power within themselves, the power mightier than taming, to which they have to subject themselves. This faith in deeper power is the gloomy magic in the play of sublimation. At the same time, it is about the faith in the ability of a body to speak honestly about freedom. The suite of stories resembling poems is re-narrated by a character that is able to expand itself in time and space, thus drastically moving its relationship towards the material world. In the tense moment it changes and affects the world which it grasps in the given instant. What appears as a paradox to the climaxing situation, is its demonic attitude to humans. The slowly moving naked bodies are merely a peak of the crazy inner tension that is only released once the all-embracing void is released. That expands into the interplay and, at the same time, duel of two entities, variably polarising and stimulating, in confrontation, their identity. The impossibility to grasp the relationship brings love to instantly return to power. He entertaining cut of the light and banal interaction with the spectators brings to the present the mythological magic of the hitherto developments. The drama of the quest is moved in between the spectators. In the end, the multi-layered struggle for supremacy turns into a norm and status quo.
In his work, Mr Viňarský sanctified body into a complex element of expression, into the communicator of noble humanistic ideas, tricky, as well as straightforward philosophical views, banal human failures, hesitations, endearing banalities, heart-breaking personal torment and pain, irritating sexuality and mesmerising physicality of body. He constantly moves on the edge of corporal capability, honesty of personal statement, charming manipulation and polarised emotionality.
A list of original works:
2001 – Sorton, duWAdance, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Alfred ve dvoře, Prague
2001 – Inner laws, duWAdance, co-author with Tomáš Krivošík. Première: Alfred ve dvoře, Prague
2002 – A Little Parable, duWAdance, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Alfred ve dvoře, Prague
2003 – Tea never brewed, duWAdance, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Duncan Centre, Prague
2004 – The Last Step Before, SKOK!, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Duncan Centre, Prague
2004 – Mi Non Sabir, SKOK!, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Duncan Centre, Prague
2007 – Paisyn, The Grotowski Institute, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: The Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw
2007 – Holeulone, Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties, directed by: Karine Ponties, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Théâtre Les Tanneurs, Brussels
2008 – Havran, Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties, directed by: Karine Ponties, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Théâtre Les Tanneurs, Brussels
2008 – Butticula: Fool’s figures, SKOK!, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Culture Centre Station Žilina-Záriečie, Žilina
2009 – Humus Vertebra, Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties, directed by: Karine Ponties, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Théâtre Les Tanneurs, Brussels
2010 – 3x (A), Theatre z Pasáže, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Theatre from the Passage, Banská Bystrica
2010 – Helver and Them, SKOK!, Záhrada – Centre for Independent Culture, co-author with with Viera Dubačová. Première: International Festival of Theatre with Social Dimension Akcent 2010, Banská Bystrica
2011 – Kalbo, Plovdiv State Puppet Theatre, directed by Petar Todorov, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Plovdiv State Puppet Theatre, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
2011 – My Funny Games, KALD, directed by: Petra Tejnorová, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Theatre Disk, Prague
2012 – ANIMALINSIDE, SKOK!, idea, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský, choreography collaboration: Marek Menšík. Première: Záhrada – Centre for Independent Culture, Banská Bystrica
2013 – LIFEshow, directed by: Petra Tejnorová, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: site-specific project / in different parts of Prague and Olomouc, at the festival Fringe in Stockholm and ArtsDepot in London
2014 – Midsummer Night’s Dream, HaTheatre, Brno, directed by: Petra Tejnorová, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: HaTheatre, Brno
2016 – You Are Here, SKOK!, Michal Somoš, Tanec Praha, directed by: Petra Tejnorová, choreography: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Ponec – theatre for dance, Prague
2018 – Godsayingdetones, Príchod Godota, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: Arteatro, Bratislava
2019 – Love, Príchod Godota, choreography and directed by: Jaro Viňarský. Première: A4 – Space for Contemporary Culture, Bratislava.
Videos from productions:
The Last Step Before, 2004
Author of the trailer: Jaro Viňarský
archive of the SKOK!
The video can be found at the following link: www.vimeo.com/30961113
Butticula: Fool’s figures, 2008
Author of the trailer: Jaro Viňarský
archive of the SKOK!
The video can be found at the following link: www.vimeo.com/30961485
ANIMALINSIDE, 2012
Author of the trailer: Peter Kotrha
archive of the SKOK!
The video can be found at the following link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTM2KZ1H4r4
