LENKA VAGNEROVÁ & COMPANY

 

Premiere: September 14, 2025, Komedie Theatre, Prague

​

The production Your Ghosts, My Shadows is a unique collaboration between Emilie Leriche and Pascal Marty and the Lenka Vagnerová & Company ensemble. Together with music composed by Wolff Bergen, this exceptional trio will create an authentic and compelling production for six core company dancers. 

​

​​

"As a departure arises, one question persists: Why leave? 

To which we respond, but why stay?

 

Regardless of choice the result is inevitably that of two realities: The “here” and the “there”, us caught in between. As present in whatever space we occupy, as the spaces we could have been but are not. At times absent to the physical bodies trying to hold us in the now, as part of us has stayed with those we’ve let go.

​

​Departures are funny like that - they test the limits between these two sides, bending their very fabric, blurring lines and stories and time. They make us wonder how it might be over there, projecting us into these other realities. As fictional as it may seem, this “other side” is a tangible space. Imagining what’s right beyond the edges of our present moment, we manage to exist in these other places by proxy but without ever being there. It’s not -of course- all fantasy, as reality is precisely what motivated us to leave, or sometimes to stay.​​ Places and situations may drive us in or out, but their people make us linger… It is of these places that this work intends to speak: the ones we have no choice but to return to.”

Pascal Marty & Emilie Leriche

​​

​​

Interview Opera+, Hana Strejčková, Emilie Leriche and Pascal Marty: Your Ghosts, My Shadows – not only about the upcoming premiere:

Emilie Leriche: “We are constantly leaving somewhere This is dictated by our career, which asks us to leave, to part ways, to leave people with whom we have been truly close for years Even our friendships have gone through periods of certain distance from each other And then this opportunity appeared, which gave us a chance to reconnect after some time So I think our first thought was to communicate through time, across the distances between people who were once so deeply rooted in our lives With this came shadows and ghosts, and the question of what influence they still have on us Gradually, from our thoughts, the environment of one family crystallized, and we came across letters we never sent to anyone and messages we never received We reached things we wanted to say but could not We remembered people in our lives and old relationships with them – family, romantic, friendships All of this offered us many perspectives on distance – on moving apart”

​

Pascal Marty: "In her part, Emilie talks about her past, and I deal with her present In fact, we move forward and backward, we are constantly between what has already passed and what constitutes the present And even though we decided on this type of intertwined collaboration, we each retain our own creative and choreographic identity."

​"Yet suddenly, during the first roughly twelve hours, we looked at each other and nodded in agreement – that is Mom and the others We didn’t have to search for the representatives of our characters; they simply came to us That was absolutely amazing."

​

​

Events in Culture, Czech TV art, report

​

​

Modern Theatre / Hana Dolejší Lehečková, Lenka Vagnerová / Prague City Theatres

Emilie Leriche: "It was wonderful to come into the studio on the first day and watch how each of them naturally assumed one of the characters – as if we had known it all along I have a very vivid memory of Pascal and me standing at the front, watching the company at work, holding onto each other, whispering and smiling – already seeing clearly how the story we had spent so much time on was unfolding before us Working with these artists, as well as with Lenka and her entire team, has been an incredible joy for us."

​

Pascal Marty: "In this sense, it is everyone’s story – whether epic or intimate – leaving is Humanity’s shadow, our shadow I see this piece as a way to reconnect with one another, and I hope the audience walks out having experienced that."

​"Despite the extensive preparation Emilie and I did before starting the creation – almost two years of work – some of my strongest ideas emerged directly in the studio I feel we came into the process with a lot to offer, yet what we received from the dancers far exceeded what we had brought ourselves It was a humbling lesson in generosity and listening – an artistic dialogue that never stops and takes you on an unexpected journey."​​​​​​