Serve and Protect at MOVE Fest Ostrava 2025? Join the international project by Direct Action Theatre!

The upcoming September MOVE Fest Ostrava brings one of the most striking site-specific performances of today - Direct Action Theatre: To Protect and Serve. This series of public interventions by the Czech–Norwegian collective will stir the streets of Ostrava - and you can be part of it. The open call for local performers is now live!

A new angle on what we (don’t) see around us

The riot police uniform - a symbol of power, strength, authority. But what happens when a performer puts it on and starts dancing, meditating, or crying in the middle of the city?

To Protect and Serve plays with the visual language of authority and explores power in absurd and unexpected contexts. It is theatre, dance, protest, and poetry at once. The result is a radically contemporary work positioned between art and activism - artivism - transforming public space and the way we perceive it.

Participatory projects? A MOVE Fest tradition!

This project is part of a long-term curatorial line of participatory performances in public space that MOVE Fest has been developing for years. In previous editions, audiences could experience works such as Suitcaseboarding by tYhle, Ilona Jäntti’s industrial-acrobatic Zátěž bez tíže (Weightless Load) or Luxury Memories in the former Ostravica Textilia department store - along with other projects that cultivate public space, open urgent contemporary themes, and actively engage local communities.

Who are we looking for?

We are currently looking for 10 performers, dancers, or movement enthusiasts from Ostrava and the surrounding area who are not afraid of challenge, physicality, and active artistic collaboration.

Rehearsals led by the Czech–Norwegian creative team will take place on: 24 & 25 September 2025, from 10:00 to 14:00.

The final public performance will take place on: 26 September 2025 at 12:30 and 16:30 in the city centre of Ostrava, as part of the main program of MOVE Fest Ostrava 2025.

Participants must be available for all rehearsal and performance dates and be able to communicate within the team in English. 😉

What do you gain from taking part?

• Experience working with an international professional team

• Participation in a project presented as part of a leading festival of contemporary dance, new circus and physical theatre

• Collaboration with Thalia Award–winning artist Nela H. Kornetová, known in Ostrava from performances such as Badman and Tumor: A carcinogenic romance

• Financial compensation

• A full festival pass for MOVE Fest Ostrava 2025

⏰ Applications are open until 10 September 2025. Selected participants will be contacted by 15 September.

And what can you look forward to?

Arrest Yoga

Do you want to feel powerful? Or just present?

During this public intervention, you’ll have the chance to meditate on good and evil — and stretch your body at the same time.

And Everyone Cried…

Hugging trees and crying?

Yes. Even the strong ones break sometimes.

We know men cry. Women cry.

But can police officers cry too?

When the world is burning — where do the cracks begin to show?

We carry feelings we can’t explain. Maybe they aren’t even ours.

We cry and dance with beings bigger and smaller than us.

Maybe it’s the sorrow of whales losing their oceans,

or squirrels mourning their burning acorns.

We’re not here alone, and not here only for ourselves.

We wander together. We marvel together. We get lost together.

And then… what next?

Falling for the Environment

What about sunrise?

What about rain?

Did you ever stop to notice this crying Earth, these weeping shores?

Michael Jackson was asking these questions in the 90s.

Why, twenty years later, has nothing changed?

Why are we still pretending it’s fine?

Direct Action Theatre is preparing for the apocalypse —

and practicing how to fall down stairs head-first.

Be there.

Become a witness to this epic, absurd, deeply human act.

About Direct Action Theatre

Direct Action Theatre (D.A.T.) is an international collective working at the intersection of art, performance, and activism. The ensemble stands firmly on the side of all “the eggs that break against the wall” — as Haruki Murakami so precisely describes it.

Through strong visual imagery and physical interventions in public space, D.A.T. draws attention to contemporary social, environmental, and political issues. Their performances are unsettling, beautiful, and playful at the same time — and they are impossible to forget.

Supported by:

Performing Arts Hub Norway, Norwegian Ministry of Culture, Fund for Performing Artists (FFUK), Arts Council Norway, Nordic Culture Point, Østfold International Theatre, Nová síť, EEA Grants, T.I.T.S. performance group, Projektor Pøblene, Grenland Friteater, Rosendal Theatre, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, City of Ostrava, Move Ostrava, Moravian-Silesian Region, and others.

Be there. Protect differently.