Setting up a Portrait

Ondrej Vidlar is a long-term member of Trajal Harrell’s Dancing Company, currently working as Harrel’s assistant for an upcoming piece called O’Medea. Although a charming and quirky person today, thirty years ago Ondrej was still a shy kid, often preferring a safe corner rather than the spotlight. Dance was undoubtedly a key factor to him overcoming his shyness as a child, and has now become his professional career. Having danced professionally for over twenty years now, Ondrej looks back on his life and his first encounters with dance, particularly how the theatre stage became a place of freedom and enlightenment at thirteen.

After dancing in his leisure time for a while, he found himself being drawn towards the dance world, but his parents advised him to do something fixed and normal after high school graduation. The “fixed and normal” turned out to be business school. While studying there, his interest in dance grew more the farther he drifted away from its professional world, partially because he could keep it as his own way of entertainment.

Even when doing his civil services after university, he still did not abandon dance.

For him, dancing was where he could talk to and express himself. His journey to be a dancer started when a teacher who was teaching him modern dance told me that he quitted the company in Slovakia, and he asked him to go for an audition there. This was the step where he started to professionally be a dancer. As he grew up and became a great dancer, he left the Czech Republic to be more successful and famous. Most of his friends were surprised that he moved away, because they never expected from a shy kid to leave home and travel around.

Early Life / Starting off his Career

While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact beginning of Ondrej’s professional career, one of the beginnings was his social service work at a dance theatre in Czech Republic. While working, he started creating small choreographies with the kids there. Sifting through his memories, Ondrej describes that period of his life as one of his most beloved: “We were a really small group – maybe 24 people – so we were all close. No one really took it that seriously, so we danced for our own fun, really.”

Becoming more and more involved in dance, Ondrej eventually started creating not only group work, but also coming up with duets and solos. However, having no formal education in dance, he sometimes felt like he was at a disadvantage when competing with other dancers. “I couldn’t do all that crazy stuff you see in tv shows, like people kicking their legs to their heads or doing extreme jumps,” Ondrej explains, “so my technique was not there. I couldn’t do all these crazy things, so I was always looking for the other options, trying to go around that.”

Looking back, Ondrej attributes many of his successes to luck. A huge turning point for his career as a professional dancer was the decision to go to university – although it can hardly be seen as a decision. During his second year of performing together with a dance theatre company, two of his colleagues decided to audition for PARTS School of Contemporary Dance in Brussels, one of the most prestigious dance schools in the world. After some further encouragement from his fellow dancers, he finally decided to join them and go try for an audition. “At the time, I was almost twenty-three.” He looks back, “I realized that if I wanted to pursue dance seriously, this was essentially my last chance.”

What followed seems like a story from a cheesy fairytale: after going to Brussels for the audition, Ondrej turned out to be the only one who passed the first round, and eventually was the only one of their group who actually got accepted. “Even my director in the theatre didn’t want me to go, she really really wanted me to stay. But I went, and that definitely changed everything. I certainly went from Czech and Slovakia to Belgium, and around the world from that point.”

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Meeting and Collaborating with Trajal Harrell

Doing his research on the operation of body while in his third year of study, Ondrej received the opportunity to visit New York. He loved that city, which making him to start going there often. One summer, Ondrej’s classmate met Trajal in one of the dancing workshop in Vienna, she suggested him to meet Trajal. At that period in Europe, Trajal was not as well-known as nowadays. People got to know Trajal in the workshops, but Trajal had not officially performed to the public yet. After a few times of arrangements, Ondrej and Trajal finally met. Ondrej said that it may be the miscommunication of his classmate with Trajal, so Trajal thought he needed a job and wanted to be recruited. Instead, Ondrej was simply curious. No matter what, he was willing to open his options as wide as possible. Like Ondrej said, “Sure, maybe one day.”

Ondrej did not expect a call from Trajal afterwards, but it happened. Traveling around the world for their performances (such as in Mexico and Brazil), Ondrej and Trajal went across each other more and more often. Three years later, Trajal invited Ondrej to join his team.

Except the one they worked on together, Trajal was collaborating on another project with a well-known visual artist called Sarah Sze, who is the head of the American Pavilion in Venice Vienna, as well. During that time, Trajal invited Ondrej and other two guys to live in his residence in Boston. Even though Ondrej knew he would not be the performers for Sarah’s piece, he considered it as a research on the piece that he participated with Trajal.

As it was his first time being in a studio and starting conducting a project, Ondrej had no idea what he was working on or how it would operate. However, he thought the whole process had gone smoothly and was “fun.” Ondrej described the selection of dancers was interesting.

“We were supposed to have one female and five male dancers. But then, we received the news that the girl was not participating. In turns, coming with the idea of vogue and post-modern dance, Antigone, the greek tragedy, would be performed by five guys.”

With limited knowledge of vogue, Ondrej started doing his research: watching vogue videos & Paris Is Burning, reading Antigone, and discussing about them. Still, Ondrej felt everything was a challenge for him.

“Nearly all the other people had a better understanding about the sense of fashion and these topics than me. I know what fashion is, but I was just not THAT interested. For example, while in the costume preparation stage, I was the only person who was like, ‘omg, what are we doing exactly?’ Due to these, I always called my peers “Divas.” I may become “diva” one day in the future, but more confusion was lied within me at that time.”

To conclude, the first journey with Trajal was tough for Ondrej since he had to face these obstacles by himself. Nevertheless, it was an unforgettable and fun experience for him.

Interviewed and edited by Najla, Auguste, and Yuki

“Link to Part 1 Interview Video” “Link to Part 2 Video Interview”

“Link to Full Interview Transcript”