Živana Vajsarová

Živana Vajsarová is one of the leading Czech dance teachers, respected at home and abroad. Her work combines the finest folk traditions with those of modern dance, creating a distinctive style of stage-stylised folk dance that unites the spiritual and artistic heritage of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia with the expressive dance principles of Jarmila Jeřábková.

The path to dance

Guided towards dance and music by her father, Prof. František Bonuš, she danced as a child in the Jaro group he founded. From the age of fifteen she studied with Jarmila Jeřábková and danced in her modern dance group, later in Eva Blažíčková’s Chamber Dance Studio. She graduated from the Dance Department of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and assisted her father at folklore seminars at home and abroad.

Teacher and choreographer

She taught at Jarmila Jeřábková’s studio and at the Radotín art school, where she founded the Jaro Dance Group in 1983; since 1990 she has taught at ZUŠ Štefánikova in Prague 5. For more than ten years she taught at the Duncan Centre conservatory, she teaches at the Academy of Performing Arts, has led many workshops in Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan (once teaching Czech folk dances to seven hundred dancers at a time), and has choreographed for many ensembles abroad. She also created numerous choreographies for the Kühn Children’s Choir.

Awards

Her lifelong work has received many awards, including recognition from the Folklore Association of the Czech Republic. In 2023, the Minister of Culture thanked her on her jubilee: “Your sensitive dance expression, steadfastly rooted in the legacy of your father František Bonuš, is a unique phenomenon in our dance world.”