The work is both cinematic and theatrical. Here each interaction, each touch or lean or lift is given its full erotic, personal, aggressive or tender implication.The performers keep presenting themselves as human beings first, dancers second. The effect is both disconcerting and very moving.
Mary Bayley, The Seattle Times, 22. 11. 2003
Interwoven into the highly charged piece are violence and lust and bouts of humour. And silence. Six superb dancers run on full octane, expressively and physically , with moments of lyricism and tenderness deftly placed at the right moments, to give remarkable cohesion and structure to the piece.
R.M. Campbell, Seattle Post, 22. 11. 2003
Filled with slapping slashing and kicking moves, the choreography matched the acting in emotional heat, and both expressed the sence that fury lies at core of desire.
"IN BELLA COPIA" powerfully conveyed the high price of staying locked in destructive self-delusion.
Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times, 6. 12. 2003
I admire the balance that Flory, Sandroni and the other terrific actors strike between ridiculous erotomania and real-life vulnerability and victimisation, and their awareness of how a teasing game may tip over into something dangerous. But even in the high sta,kes of sexual power play, they imply, there is room for forgiveness and redemption.
Donald Hutera, Times on line, London 14. 10. 2003
Watching IN BELLA COPIA, you are laughing and aching at the same time. Brilliantly interlocking duets are studded with split-second stillnesses, during which the dancers dare each other to escalate pleasure or pain. Each character undergoes a drastic transformation that leaves the audience reeling, but with the possibility for exhilaration too.
Wendy Perron, The Village Voice May 2003
DEJA DONNE's In Bella Copia resonates like thick black smoke against a clear blue sky. Featuring pleasure, violence, compassion, hatred, and humility, it plumbs the depths of emotion played out on a stage with its back open to the
audience.
Gay City 11. 4. 2003
With the agitated nature of dancing and the extremeness of the interactions onstage, IN BELLA COPIA could have the effect of keeping one awake far into the night.
Wendy Perron, The New York Times 30. 3. 03
Clothes Can Be Flung Off, but Anxieties Still Remain.
DEJA DONNE, an experimental dance troupe founded in Prague in 1996, shot Dance Theater Workshop's new international season, World Wide Works, off to a cannonball start.
Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times 9. 4. 03
I think that the sincerity and humanity that underlies this work (and other work I've seen by this company) is defining. Their theater is a fluent hybrid of modes, languages, styles. But at the base it's really, really truthful. They took their initial premise to its full conclusion — sexy but also ugly and humbling — and were generous enough to put it on stage.
Karin Keithely, Offoffoff.com. The Guide to alternative New York 9. 4. 03
Quite apart from the breathtaking speed of the fine-tuned choreography, it is remarkable to watch the relationships continuing to develop between these hurt performer/characters onstage, perceivable even as they spin, thrust, and hammer away like engine parts. This choreographic culmination of the performance is also a sign of maturity in Déjà Donné’s work as a company: for now extremely demanding choreography and grounded emotional conflict and interactivity are being performed simultaneously, and often in counterpoint.
Ewan McLaren, Dance Zone Magazine 2002
Déjà Donné hold up a mirror: what is happening on the stage is often an imprint of our memories of the saddest, the most painful and the most embarrassing moment we have ever experienced. Moments when we are for ourselves. A strong experience.
Martina Kemrová, Mladá Fronta Dnes, 8. 3. 2002
Déjà Donné definitely ranks among the Czech (let´s admint: having rather limited local competition it is not so difficult) as well as world top of the dance theatre.
Jana Bohutínská, Divadelní noviny, 5. 3. 2002
In these masterfully constructed situations, the bizzare narcissistic figures we watch are fuelled by lust and the desire for attention.
Dance Zone Magazine, Nina Vangeli, March 2002
The breathtaking climax of the performance comes when the hurt „fortune seekers“ dance - fighting each other in highly precise choreography.
Nürnberger Nachrichten, 11. 2. 2002
Brilliant dance body language and humour used as a spring board for the dramatic purposes of the perfomance. Today definitely one of the best European touring companies. You must see this!
Dieter Stoll, Abend Zeitung, 7. 2. 2002
What a vital interpretation, how comprehensive the individual parts merge into the inherent language of movement!
Michaela Schlagenwerth, Berliner Zeitung, 7. 2. 2002
To seek without clothes to be truly what one is. To arrive thus at our essence. A real, great and priceless goal.
Gilda Camero, Bari Sera, 19. 12. 2001
Flory, Sandroni and their very intense, very talented dancers produce a choreographic storyline of rare compactness and strength - at last some real, complex, remarkable choreographies - nervous and carnal in their movement, in the continual interplay of action and reaction.
Nicola Viesti, Corriere del Mezzogiorno, 18. 12. 2001
There were seven of them, breathtaking and incredible with their pure, raw energy and near-Siamese synergies; flamboyantly erotic. Carried throughout by the phenomenal music dramaturgy of Gaetan van den Berg, choreography like fauns in heat by Simone Sandroni and Lenka Flory, they leave us yet again hungry for more. So here's to a third meeting soon.
Georges Cazenove, Dernieres Nouvelles D’Alsace, 20. 11. 2001
