Abeceda - Taneční kompozice Milča Majerová – Nezval Vítězslav (2023)

The publishing house Volvox Globator presents a reprint of a fundamental work of Czech literary and artistic avant-garde. Almost a hundred years ago, in 1924, the collection of quatrains by Vítězslav Nezval – Abeceda was published for the first time, as part of the collection Pantomima, which was conceived as a poetic manifesto of poetism. Two years later, Abeceda was published separately with the subtitle: 'dance composition by Milča Majerová' in the typographic design of Karel Teige. It is a concept of the meeting of independent arts, that is, the intertwining of word, movement, and image. While the dancer, captured in the photographs of Karel Paspa, is directly inspired by the individual letters and embodies them pantomimically, the poet writes in the introduction to the book: 'I was not concerned [...] with the physiological capture of the color of sounds and their poetic reconstruction. The letter was more of a motive than a theme for me, a stone that was to stir the surface, an excuse for a poem.' He works associatively and often leaves his short lyrical texts as an unanswered riddle. Or as an invitation into the colorful world of Indians, pharaohs, dancers, clowns, snake charmers, and pipers from Chodsko, into a world where the boundary between the familiar and the exotic is blurred, into a world that is hidden under the roof of the letter A. ***** And named either simply...