Festival Tanec '89 | 11 – 22 July 1989

The history of the TANEC PRAHA Festival dates back to the summer of '89, when the Prague Cultural Centre (today no longer existing) included several days of dance performances held in the Municipal House as part of the Prague Cultural Summer. Jan Hartmann helped create the program for the Prague Cultural Centre. Two international guests were joined by several Czech ensembles (Prague Chamber Ballet, Unia nova, UNO, etc.), and all this took place in July, basically as an event for tourists. Kylián's junior ensemble – the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 – arrived with works by real masters: Jiří Kylián, Ohad Naharin and Nacho Duato. Indeed, it was Kylián who convinced the director of the Prague Cultural Centre of the necessity to enrich Prague's cultural offering with contemporary dance. His work, like Naharin's Passomezzo, resonated very strongly. Kylián later returned to Prague several times with NDT outside the festival in a production by Jiří Opěla, Ohad Naharin became a favourite of the festival's audience, in the 1990s thanks to the Geneva Ballet, then twice with his junior ensemble (1999 and 2004) and only in 2014 with the Batsheva Dance Company. In June 2018, after 30 years, it will be Jiří Kylián who will symbolically launch the jubilee 30th festival.