Prague Chamber Ballet is the largest Czech independent professional dance ensemble. Its origins date back to 1964 when Luboš Ogoun, Pavel Šmok and Vladimír Vašut founded the Studio Ballet Prague. In 1975 the choreographer Pavel Šmok founded the Prague Chamber Ballet which proved to be an important milestone in the development of Czechoslovak ballet. The ensemble’s repertoire included mainly Šmok’s choreographies but also choreographies of guest domestic and international choreographers. The ensemble went through an ambitious and successful development, it became an important representative of the Czech and Prague dance art abroad and received a number of awards.
The current ensemble consists of ten resident and six internship dancers whose repertoire of movement ranges from techniques based on classical dance up to those based on contemporary and modern dance, they have got their own technical and managerial teams. The artistic director is Linda Svidró who continues in the tradition with regard to Czech creation and opportunities for Czech professional artists. The resident choreographer of the ensemble is Petr Zuska, former artistic director of the National Theatre Ballet and an artist of a Europe-wide reputation. He created a very popular production “A Bouquet” for the Prague Chamber Ballet (the soloist Dominik Vodička was awarded the prestigious Thalia Award 2019 for the best male performance in the category Dance and movement theatre, Petr Zuska was awarded a prize for the best choreography, Ondřej Brousek was awarded a special mention for original music and Jan Dušek was awarded a special mention for artistic design on a nationwide Dance Show Ballet 2019).
In recent years, the Prague Chamber Ballet has also received two broader nominations for Thalia Awards – Tereza Hloušková (2020) for the best female performance in the Ballet, Dance and Movement Theater category (Fo(u)r One, solo choreographed by Petr Zuska) and Ondřej Vinklát (2022) for the best male performance in the Ballet, Dance and Movement Theater category (Epitaph, solo choreographed by Petr Zuska).