ČEZ CHESS TROPHY 2016

Living chess and swordsmen on Strelecky Island

[30.05.2016 00:00:00] - There are not many attractive chess events for non-chess players. The two exceptions are blindfold chess and living chess. On Saturday the 4th of June at 3 PM, the performance on the Strelecky Island will combine these two disciplines.

Come and take a look at the show full of sword duels between actors dressed up as chess pieces on a large 12m chessboard. They will be performing the blindfold game of GMs David Navara and Richard Rapport.

The tradition of living chess is quite long in many cultures, its beginnings dating as far back as the 7th century. It was a favourite pastime in Renaissance Europe, but it also has a dark side connected with the courts of Sultan Muhammad I and Ivan the Terrible, where the title “dead chess” would be more appropriate. Living chess was also played in ancient China, as documented by the explorer Marco Polo, and in India. Many references can be found in literature as well, for example in Francois Rabelais’s classic Gargantua and Pantagruel.

In Bohemia, spectacular living chess performances took place in 1895 as part of the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition, and during the Sokol Festival in 1907. During this year’s CEZ CHESS TROPHY festival in Prague, you can enjoy the show of a group from the town of Banska Stiavnica in Slovakia, where they have been performing for many years already. This year you can seem them in Prague on Saturday the 4th of June at 3 PM on the Strelecky Island.

The living chess performance is organised with the support of the International Visegrad Fund as part of the V LIVE 4 CHESS project.

| Pavel Matocha | visits(3419x)