The enumeration of everything you are responsible for in culture is admirable. What do you enjoy the most?
That I can do architecture once, theater a second time, social and sports events and travel. I’m such a restless person and I can’t imagine being a barber, a botanical garden director, or a crane operator all my life. But with gratitude for maintaining the order of the world, I admire people who have devoted their entire lives to one profession and are good and satisfied in it. I’m probably obsessed with diversity, and that enriches me.
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Where do you get your energy moving from one demanding work activity to a completely different one?
Probably just by crossing. If I did the same, it’s monotonous and a little beating for me. By changing activities with refreshments for the next chapter.
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Your brother Michal (60), who is two years older, is also versatile and artistically gifted. Who did you inherit such talents from?
My father was a clerk, albeit in a high position, raised by Baťa, he had little to do with art, but he did not discourage us from trying to rock band, long hair and exuberant student life. My mother directly supported us and apparently passed on the necessary genes to us. She liked music, she danced great. He probably has the biggest share in that.
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My brother and you founded the Křeč Ballet Unit (BJK) in 1980. Her projects culminated in the late 1980s with a rock-dance event and the short film Colors, which was part of Tomáš Vorel’s generational short story Pražská 5. How is BJK doing today?
Like the Knights of Blanice (laughs), when it’s worst, we’ll convene. Since my brother recently celebrated his 60th birthday, we think we would still be able to put something together with reasonable correction. Then it will be just a sentimental repayment. Maybe we’ll give you some more of the best. But BJK members don’t know about it yet.
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The Cabani brand has been associated with choreography at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival since 1995. Where do you get ideas for her?
I don’t know, they’re coming, pay god, they’re coming! It’s also about refreshing from different interests and activities. We observe the world and life, but we don’t spend the evenings desperately surfing YouTube to find ideas that others have come up with.
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This is also due to the different conditions in Vary every year. Another theme, different graphics by Aleš Najbrt, sometimes inspires that. When it comes out, we are pleased, because the synergy is good. Sometimes we feel like we have ten ideas. Other times we ask ourselves – Jesus Christ, what are we going to do? So far, it has always come. We do not solve ideas, but how to solve them technically under the given conditions.
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Together with their colleague, jury and architect Kamila Douděrová, they are said to have the same taste and aesthetic feeling.
Photo: FTV Prima
When did you have a passion for photography?
Ever before high school, and our mother has an influence on that as well. Recently, in the covid quarantine, I digitized eight-millimeter black-and-white films. The oldest are from 1934, from my mother’s father, my grandfather. Then my mother filmed in India, where they were with their father when their brother was born. These are the first color films, beautifully composed.
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You control a lot of professions, but they probably chose you as a juror for the Dream Team show – the workshop masters, because you were also a do-it-yourselfer?
I can’t shake the feeling that the do-it-yourself expression slightly degrades the positive energy that is needed. DIY arose out of an emergency. I don’t know if the word DIY was born under communism or before. For me, diy means a trait where a person is not satisfied with what he is, because today there is almost everything.
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In the past, DIY meant that everything had to be done, whether it was fashion for girls to sew clothes or shelves and go-karts made by men because there was nothing in the shops.
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Twelve competing machros, six women and six men, were selected during the castings from six hundred candidates. Would you dare to sign up for a show like an unknown handyman?
In principle, yes. If it was cooking or mushroom picking, the fields I don’t understand are indifferent to me, I wouldn’t go into it. I enjoy this, I smell the dust and sawdust, the smell of metal. There is a lot for the state in the competition, the winner will gain experience, fame and financial reward, which are good motivational moments. It’s nice to sit at home watching TV and say to myself – I’d do better. But it’s great to compete and find out that the other one did better.
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Did you like the products created in the show?
Kamila Douděrová (juror, an architect known from the show How to Build a Dream) and a third juror, who was always different, and I always dealt with the dilemma between aesthetics and craft, taking into account time conditions and possibilities.
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It was not easy. In retrospect, I think I evaluated more emotionally and humanly than strictly professionally. It was fascinating to watch their faces sweat in the sweat and how hard they went.
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It is a project that represents talented people. What quality should a Workshop Master have?
It is receptivity, the ability to reveal the talents of individuals and combine them so that they lead to the most effective cooperation and the best possible result. He should determine who will do what, as a manager.
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Throughout the competition, everyone must behave as if they are equal. Although, of course, everyone thinks it’s the best. Mutual receptivity, during which he focuses on his task, is very valuable.
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Simon Caban
Photo: Petr Hloušek, Právo
In recent years, you have focused mainly on theater directing. Don’t you have a tendency in the theater to speak to the choreography and appearance of the stage, when these fields are also your own?
I am known for talking about everything, even fields I don’t understand at all. (laughs) Like, dislike and so on.
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I return to the Křeč Ballet Unit, an student group, where everyone did what they could and in what position they naturally created a position. We didn’t deal with who was directing, who was inventing the scene, who was behind the scenes, who was painting the prospectus. When there is willingness, results come.
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You created a creative tandem about forty-five years ago with your wife Simona Rybáková, a high school classmate and now a well-known costume designer. Does he talk to you about what to wear?
Yeah, I’m comfortable in the sense that she cares about me. Sometimes he reminds me that this really isn’t. Sometimes I inspire her, for example in a cottage, where I wear my favorite worn pieces. These then appear in such films as Wasteland. Sometimes I fight because of course I’m comfortable with men and she can’t look at it. It is an irreconcilable dialogue. (Laughs)
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