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Plenary meeting DETAILS
IETM Spring Plenary Meeting 15-18 May 2008
From 15-05-08 till 18-05-08 - Ljubljana, Slovenia
Plenary meeting - All Parts - posted by IETM on 15.10.07
The organising team in Ljubljana have invited 3 important figures within Slovenian culture to select the performances for the main performance programme. They have chosen 16 performances, the diversity of which covers a wide spectrum of performing arts, from classical theatre to body art, and thus presents the dynamic creative scene of performing arts in Slovenia.
The selectors who were asked to curate the programme are: Sasa Savel, television journalist in the field of culture on Slovenian national television; Blaz Lukan, an arts critic, publicist and professor at the Academy for Radio, Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Ljubljana; Rok Vevar, an arts critic and publicist.
In addition to the selectors' programme there will be a wide variety of other performances as part of the Off Programme. These shows will be presented independently of the curators' selection in various venues throughout Ljubljana.
As a part of the artistic program of IETM Ljubljana we will offer a different experience of Ljubljana and also a different experience of artists and art organisations. In the frame of the Itineraries, rather than present themselves through their art works, these artists and art organisations will take you on a trip through Ljubljana to their homes or work places, or the places that interest and inspire them. You will be able to meet their co-workers, colleagues and also their loved ones and experience the best Ljubljana has to offer.
You can register for the Main Programme performances and the Artisitc Itineraries on the Registration Site now. To register for the Off Programme performances, please go to the Registration and Information Desks once you're in Ljubljana.
- Main Programme overview
- Main Programme details
- Off Programme overview
- Off Programme details
- Artistic Itineraries - overview
- Artistic Itineraries - details
Main Programme Overview
Thursday, May 15
19.00 - Mala Kline - DÉBUT – In Memory of Coming
20.00 - Barbara Novakovič - MOLIERE
20.30 - Gregor Moder, Sonja Vilč - DE.KONS
22.00 - Janez Janša - PUPILIJA, PAPA PUPILO AND THE PUPILCHEKS - RECONSTRUCTION
Friday, May 16
19.00 - Irena Tomažin - CAPRICE (RE)LAPSED
19.00 - Tena Štivčić, Matjaž Pograjc - FRAGILE!
19.30 - Heiner Müller, Sebastijan Horvat - QUARTET
20.30 - EnKnapGroup (DÉJÀ DONNÉ) - SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
21.00 - Roland Schimmelpfennig, Sebastijan Horvat - BEFORE/AFTER
22.00 - Maja Delak - EXPENSIVE DARLINGS
Saturday, May 17
19.00 - Via Negativa - VIVA VERDI
19.00 - Milan Tomášik - WITHIN
19.30 - Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ivica Buljan - PIGSTY
20.00, 21.30, 22.30 - Eclipse - SPECTRUM MAGENTA
20.30 - Leja Jurišić - R'Z'R
21.00 - Matjaž Pograjc, Betontanc, Umka.LV - SHOW YOUR FACE!
Sunday, May 18
14.00 - Matjaž Pograjc, Betontanc, Umka.LV - SHOW YOUR FACE!
Main Programme Details
Mala Kline - DÉBUT – In Memory of Coming
May 15 at 19.00
Venue: Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
Duration: 60 minutes
English language performance.
Début is not Mala Kline’s actual début. Rather it is the creation of a confident and unique artist, who, using a Lynchian atmosphere takes her viewers on a pathway between worlds and guides them through her work as if through a labyrinth of meanings. The piece begins with a diva complaining about work conditions and how she simply “cannot do it”, and flows into a dance solo that both physically and on an abstract level opens a new landscape on the stage, and ends, as they say in fairy tales, happily ever after. The live performance is accompanied by powerful sound and video images.
Début - In Memory of Coming was created by a team at numerous artistic residences (Girona, Lisbon, Berlin). It emerged under the auspices of the Mediterranean project entitled Sites of Imagination. Mala Kline is a performance artist and choreographer. Much of her professional knowledge and experience was acquired through her work with Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart, Josef Nadj… She has danced in pieces by Iztok Kovaè and Wim Vandekeybus. She has co-choreographed work with Maja Delak. Her first big independent choreographic work Campo de’ Fiori was very successful. She is completing her studies in philosophy.
Production: Bunker, Ljubljana
Barbara Novakovič - MOLIERE
May 15 at 20.00
Venue: SNG Drama Ljubljana (Mala Drama)
Duration: 65 minutes
English subtitles.
The performance piece Molière is a story composed of dramatic personages. Characters such as Tartuffe, Agnes, and Alceste walk the stage…as well as Molière, his younger self, his mother, his muse… Barbara Novakoviè Kolenc creates a new dramatic text using movement and humour interwoven with characters from Molière’s plays (Tartuffe, The School for Wives, The Imaginary Invalid), scenes from Molière’s life, and the correspondence between Descartes and Pascal. All of this combines to make a new structure, “a document of the time in which the artist lived”, as Novakoviè Kolenc put it.
Barbara Novakovič Kolenc is a director, actor, producer, set designer, and curator. In 1993, she established the Muzeum Theatre which later was formalized as the Muzeum Institute, a production house for performances, visual projects, and publishing. Kolenc’s creativity is characterised by linking the theatre to other artistic fields: music, movement, visual arts….
Production: Muzeum, Ljubljana
Co-production: B-51 Cultural Society - Ex Ponto Festival
In cooperation with: SNG Drama, Ljubljana
Gregor Moder, Sonja Vilč - DE.KONS
May 15 at 20.30
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova dvorana
Duration: 60 minutes
English language performance.
De.Kons is based on the traditions of improvisational theatre, though it also finds inspiration in other firmly established structures, and enters a dialogue with Dadaism, Luddism, poetry, clown performances, and language theory. The basic improvisational element is a sentence which is suggested at the beginning of the performance by the audience. This sentence offers the two performers the text that they use throughout the entire performance. The sentence becomes a sequence of sounds with which the performers and the cellist interplay. In the context of already determined situations and the stage set, the sentence becomes the starting point for various new situations. The deconstruction of the sentence not only occurs in the sense of it being reduced to sound alone: following the improvisational method, new meanings (both intentional and unintentional) are discovered over time. Repetitions and new transitions create a language unique to each performance.
Teater Narobov creates street interventions, theatrical happenings, radio shows, and interactive performances. Its creations emerge from collective work and improvisation.
Production: Narobov, KUD France Prešeren
Janez Janša - PUPILIJA, PAPA PUPILO AND THE PUPILCHEKS - RECONSTRUCTION
May 15 at 22.00
Venue: Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
Duration: 90 minutes
English subtitles.
The performance Pupilija papa Pupilo and the Pupilcheks was first performed in 1969 as directed by Dušan Jovanović. Poets, visual artists, musicians, and amateurs appeared on the stage. The piece is composed of twenty scenes that include elements of everyday life, popular culture, folklore, children’s games, contemporary dance, performance, and improvisation. At the same time, the work is a happening, ritual theatre, cabaret, and political protest. Its political orientation is apolitical. Instead of manning the barricades, Pupilcheks play children’s games. Instead of writing political tracts, they drink milk. As originally performed, the piece was one of the most influential works of experimental theatre in Slovenia. Its reconstruction is not a simple revival. The contemporary context adds a new layer, new commentary, and even an entirely new element with the creative intervention of Janez Janša who provides accompanying videotaped commentary and reflections.
Janez Janša is the director. Some of his other performances include Camillo Memo 1.0, Miss Mobile, We are all Marlene Dietrich FOR, Slovene National Theatre etc. Janša is also the co-creator and director of Maska Institute, which is engaged in production and publishing. For eight years, Janša was the editor of Maska Magazine, he edited two comprehensive collections on the theory of performing art, and continues to publish and lecture.
Production: MASKA Production
Co-production: Festival EX PONTO
Co-producer of video: Videoprodukcija Kregar
Irena Tomažin - CAPRICE (RE)LAPSED
May 16 at 19.00
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova dvorana
Duration: 60 minutes
No text.
Caprice (Re)Lapsed is the revival and expansion of the performance piece Caprice, which was first staged in 2005. One year later, Irena Tomažin has thought through the original piece, characterised it as a way station, and created a new performance that, like the first, is based on music and movement. It is only the individual questions and elements that are different, but when one link in the chain is changed, then the entire series has a different outcome—a different performance. Irena Tomažin has surrounded the stage with large white objects, and her body and voice move among them. With these objects, she has created a composition of dance and music, though which the voice dominates, floating through the landscape and finding every possible register.
Irena Tomažin is a renaissance-like multitalented artist: a contemporary dancer, actor, performance artist, eternal seeker of what is new and different on the stage, with a strong stage presence revealing both sincerity and flair. She also works as a musician, though her music and sound work is mostly characterised by her search for new expression in the performing arts.
Production: MASKA Production
Co-production: City of Women festival (LJ)
Tena Štivčić, Matjaž Pograjc - FRAGILE!
May 16 at 19.00
Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledalisce
Duration: 120 minutes
English subtitles.
Tene Štivčić's script features figures filled with yearning: Mila who wants to sing, Marko who wants to be a comedian, Gayle who wants to be a visual artist, Tjaša who wants to get married, Erik who wants to party… all are in London and get together in a club where they are waiting for a better life to begin. The script is only the starting point however. To create a real top-level theatrical experience, it is combined with the directorial intervention of Matjaž Pograjc who brings these events to the stage. Pograjc does not direct “discreetly”, merely arranging actors on the stage and measuring time. He creates a powerful experience for contemporary viewers who are accustomed to receiving a multitude of impulses. The performers themselves not only play their roles on stage, but also animate and record the action, following the narrative of the “stage play” and the film that they are shooting themselves. They must act, move the scenery, and provide sound and light.
Since 1993, Matjaž Pograjc has worked at Slovensko Mladinsko gledališče (Slovenian Youth Theatre) which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The theatre was originally established to create performances for children and young people, but evolved into one of the most progressive and engaged of all Slovenian theatres. Today it offers a variety of theatrical aesthetics and one of the best Slovenian acting ensembles.
Production: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Heiner Müller, Sebastijan Horvat - QUARTET
May 16 at 19.30
Venue: Mestno gledalisce ljubljansko
Duration: 60 minutes
English subtitles.
Quartet emerged from the dramatic proposal of the same name by Heiner Müller and is a paraphrase of Dangerous Liaisons, the cult novel by Laclos, which is today best known for the film interpretation and the Hampton dramatisation. In contrast to the rich imagery in the film, this theatrical staging is ascetic, emphasising the acting above all. Starring in the performance are Nataša Matjašec and Radko Poliè-Rac who play the Marquise de Merteuil and the Viscount Valmont. Their bravura performance fills in for the absence of all the other elements and radiates the travesty and vulgarity of their behaviour and the desperation of their wickedness.
Sebastijan Horvat says that he tackles each new directorial challenge as if from the beginning, by questioning all of his knowledge, by asking what theatre is, what is its value system, and how it communicates these values. Because he always gives the audience a relevant and layered response to these questions, the selector is including two of his performances. Quartet is the fruit of his collaboration with the independent production house, E.P.I. Centre, and Ljubljana City Theatre, one of Ljubljana’s most important theatrical venues.
Production: E.P.I. Centre and Ljubljana City Theatre
sebastijan.horvat@guest.arnes.si
tamara_bracic@yahoo.com
EnKnapGroup (DÉJÀ DONNÉ) - SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
May 16 at 20.30
Venue: Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
Duration: 65 minutes
No text.
The En Knap Group is the first attempt at an institutionalised ensemble of contemporary dance in Slovenia. Iztok Kovaè, the artistic director of En Knap, chose a group of five dancers. In 2007, the company had their debut performance with the piece Praznovanje (Celebration), an introductory festivity which was a sequence of dance miniatures that established the group’s presence in Slovenia. Praznovanje was choreographed and directed by Iztok Kovaè, Sašo Podgoršek, and Andreja Rauch Podrzavnik, all members of the long-term team of En Knap. Somewhere in between was choreographed by the tandem Déjà Donné - Lenka Flory and Simone Sandroni. For EKG’s third piece, Iztok Kovaè opened the company to choreographer Matjaž Fariè and theatre director Sebastijan Horvat.
Somewhere In Between is between Earth and Sky, and the two places are represented in the choreography of yearning bodies. The five dancers function both as individuals and as an integrated unit, technically perfected and experienced, and yet at the same time youthful, searching, and adorably naïve in their depiction of love, eroticism, and enmity…
Production: Zavod EN-KNAP
Co-production: Deja Donne
Roland Schimmelpfennig, Sebastijan Horvat - BEFORE/AFTER
May 16 at 21.00
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Linhartova dvorana
Duration: 120 minutes
English subtitles.
Sebastjan Horvat uses Schimmelpfennig’s text Vorher/Nachher as a creative framework for the construction of scenes from the lives of couples. The resulting work deals with the eternal themes of love, partnership and shared life, combining their tendency toward disintegration and everyday battles. These themes are depicted in an expressive play that reveals the interplay of exaggeration and the absurd, thus creating a distance from the script as well as an ironic distance from the performance itself. The events on stage frequently flirt with chaos, voices are raised, things are broken, people fall… In addition to its many other qualities, Before/After under the direction of Sebastijan Horvat provides an excellent survey of the young generation of Slovenian actors.
After completing his university studies, Sebastijan Horvat worked as a director in several Slovenian national theatres and in numerous independent productions. The works he directs range from miniature monologues to spectacular stagings of battle themes. He also directed Alamut for which he received the best director award at the Salzburger Festspiele festival, this year he was awarded with Prešeren award, which is the most important national award in the field of culture. Horvat is a co-founder of the E.P.I. Centre and a lecturer at the Ljubljana Academy of Performing Arts.
Production: E.P.I. CENTRE
sebastijan.horvat@guest.arnes.si
tamara_bracic@yahoo.com
Maja Delak - EXPENSIVE DARLINGS
May 16 at 22.00
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 60 minutes
Translated into English consecutively.
The status of the contemporary performance artist evokes the thought of a person in an underprivileged position. If the person in question happens to be a female, then the situation becomes truly unenviable. Expensive Darlings is a reflection on the state of contemporary dance and women in our society, though not through the perspective of self-pity, directly addressing the problem or being general. Critics have characterised the work as being one of the most engaged in recent years. Seven women on a small stage explain their situations through intimate stories, their relationships with each other, as well as through movement, contemporary dance. They play stereotypical roles—everything from angels to matadors—making fun of them and doing what they like to do most—dance. Even when it is extremely difficult to do so.
Maja Delak is a contemporary dancer, performer, and choreographer. She was a cofounder of EN-KNAP and a long-term member of the EN-KNAP dance company. She also teaches dance and has been a pioneer in the institutionalization of contemporary dance education and training in Slovenia. She was the leader behind the movement to create a high-school programme for contemporary dance. In 2006, she established EMANAT Institute to continue to affirm the role of contemporary dance through the production of performances, the publication of books (Prehodi collection), and education (AGON program).
Production: EMANAT Institute
Co-production: City of Women – Association for the promotion of women in culture and Ljubljana Dance Theatre
Via Negativa - VIVA VERDI
May 17 at 19.00
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Linhartova dvorana
Duration: 90 minutes
English subtitles.
Viva Verdi is a performance about a performance, or, put another way, a performance about why there is no performance. Its “non-existence” is the starting point that the performers on the stage research, performing their version of artistic sloth. Sloth as a brake on creativity appears as protest, uncertainty, as a way of shifting the blame to external circumstances, as despair, pride, the fight against expectation. And yet here they all are on stage; they have decided to perform. After the Zagreb premier, the critics wrote “Via Negativa has succeeded in combining what cannot be combined: a subtle analysis of sloth… Verdi and opera…a physically and ideologically uncompromising performance.”
Bojan Jablanovec is a theatre director. In 2002, he began the cycle Via Negativa which is a form of collective creation and education, as it also organizes workshops. Via Negativa is a cycle of performances each of which has as its starting point one of the human qualities that from the Christian perspective are conceived of as mortal sins. The performances function as a collage, the actors’ artistic contributions being pieces in a puzzle. As director, Jablanovec conceptually links them. This year, the cycle will be concluded with the performance Via Nova which will gather together all of the performers and material from previous performances.
Production: Via Negativa Ljubljana, Kampnagel Hamburg, Eurokaz Zagreb, Croatian National Theatre
Co-production: &TD Theatre Zagreb and Glej Theatre Ljubljana
Milan Tomášik - WITHIN
May 17 at 19.00
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 45 minutes
No text.
The performance Within is Milan Tomášik’s solo. In this piece, he works with the simplicity of three elements— sound, light, and the body – which are very precisely structured. Sound and light are made equal to the body and movement, creating a clearly delineated space in which the dancer exhibits his extraordinary technique. We could use the words “beautiful” or “pure” to describe the piece which has a rafined dramaturgical structure of successive linked sequences. During the performance, it seems that we see and feel the invisible, what is “within”.
Milan Tomášik is a contemporary dancer from Slovakia, where he was educated in contemporary dance, he also graduated at the international dance school P.A.R.T.S. He is the cofounder of the dance collective Les SlovaKs. He began working in Slovenia through the dance company EN-KNAP and later collaborated on other chorographical projects. Within was created in the production frame of Plesni teater Ljubljana (Dance Theatre Ljubljana), which is the only stage in Ljubljana dedicated exclusively to contemporary dance. Plesni teater Ljubljana works with many established artists and also promotes the early works of younger choreographers.
Production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ivica Buljan - PIGSTY
May 17 at 19.30
Venue: Drama
Duration: 160 minutes
English subtitles.
The performance Pigsty was produced and directed on the other side of Slovenia’s border with Italy. The permanent Slovenian theatre in Trieste is the principal theatre of the Slovenian minority in Italy, which, through its cultural activities, strives to preserve language and memory, if not a complete awareness of the motherland. Pasolini’s script is directed by Ivica Buljan who comes from Croatia, but is an important cocreator of the Slovenian theatrical landscape, bringing quality and freshness and a characteristic authorial seal. He began has a journalist and dramaturge, and has been working as a director since 1995. He was the artistic direction of Drama HNK Split in Croatia and a co-founder of Mini theatre Ljubljana where he works as director and dramaturge. He also works in the Slovenian institutional and non-institutional theatres. Pigsty possesses Buljan’s characteristic aesthetic, humour, the ability to arouse discomfort and to evoke alienation with the absurd. Buljan is familiar with Pasolini’s opus, one of his first directorial successes being Pasolini’s Pilad. This performance is also relevant because of its engagement: the time of impotent ideological debate is still with us.
Eclipse - SPECTRUM MAGENTA
May 17 at 20.00, 21.30, 22.30
Venue: Galerija Kapelica
Duration: 15 minutes
Spectrum Magenta is a work that was created in 2004 and has remained vital ever since, most recently it was staged in Belgrade. Spectrum Magenta is a seduction game between a female body and a computer. The performer tries to seduce the computer and find within it what she lacks. One of the female performers establishes the starting atmosphere on the stage and ensures the untroubled flow of this game of seduction, and of events on stage. The other performer takes her position on a table with a telescopic joystick and begins the game: the computer animation starts when the performer touches the joystick and is projected on a reflective screen where minimal visual reactions appear as images. The difficulty of the game progresses until it reaches a climax when the visual images on the canvas and the musical background switch places in terms of the rapidity and direction of movement. The outcome of the game is not determined in advance.
ECLIPSE is a tandem of two women educated in visual media who burst onto the scene with the need to radicalise it. The artists offer a playful form of body art that they themselves call rhetorical soft porn kitsch. In their actions, performances, and exhibitions, the two women like to poke at the most painful and taboo points of national imagery, from partisan iconography to religion, all through their own bodies.
Production: Galerija Kapelica
Leja Jurišić - R'Z'R
May 17 at 20.30
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 40 minutes
No text.
The inspiration and research material of Leja Jurišić’s solo derived from the historical and conceptual analysis of monsters, which she defines not as deviant or supernatural creatures, but instead views as a special condition, as an open space in which we can transcend the normal and quotidian. The stage is empty and from the darkness appears a dancer’s body which first circles the stage as if displaying itself for inspection. Together with the rifts of lights the dancing body is transformed into a “monster”, changing forms, and searching for the proper balance between the gesture and voice.
Leja Jurišić studied law. Her style of movement has evolved from long years of training in gymnastics and, more recently, education in the field of contemporary dance. Exodos produces young propulsive contemporary performance artists, does several international activities and the annual Exodos festivals, and Gibanica, a biennial platform for Slovenian contemporary dance.
Production: Exodos Ljubljana
Co-production: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Matjaž Pograjc, Betontanc, Umka.LV - SHOW YOUR FACE!
May 17 at 21.00 and May 18 at 14.00Venue: Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
Duration: 75 minutes
English language performance.
The performance Show Your Face! was created in Ljubljana and Riga. Its creators are members of two artistic collectives: Betontanc, masters of physical theatre, and Umka.lv masters of the theatre of objects. The creators strived to confront their and our past and to imbed it in the image of a puppet without a face, a puppet they manipulate. The puppet, a little snow suit, is an everyman and the animators make him walk through history and through the present day of our world. He sings, he dances, he flees, he falls in love and suffers in order that we will not forget the previous century and its legacy. Does anyone have a face?
Matjaž Pograjc founded Betontanc in the basement at high school in 1990. Since that time, Betontanc has travelled the world with thirteen different performances. What was written of Betontanc at its beginnings still applies: “Betontanc reveals violence as the reality of the world and tenderness as the state of the soul.” Its primary creative impulse was against pseudo-intellectualism and conceptual art, and even today, Betontanc’s performances create a special form of communication with the audience, opening viewers up, and releasing them to the theatrical experience.
Production: Bunker Ljubljana and New Theatre Institute of Latvia
Off Programme Overview
Thursday, May 15
17.00 - Luis Sepulveda, Blažka Müller - LUCKY & ZORBA
19.00 - Via Negativa - FOUR DEATHS
20.00 - Badalucca, Medioli, Visconti, Diego de Brea - THE DAMNED
20.30 - Maja Delak - SERATA ARTISTICA GIOVANILE
20.30 - Via Negativa - NOT LIKE ME
21.30 - Tanja Skok - BAROQUE
22.00 - Heiner Müller, Ivica Buljan - QUARTETT
Friday, May 16
11.00 - Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Waltl - THE UGLY DUCKLING
13.30 - Jaša Jenull , Vida Bren Cerkvenik - KORUN'S DEATH
17.00 - Snježana Premuš - YOU. STORIES OF THE BODY 3
17.00 - Katja Kähkönen - BEAUTY OR THE BEAST
17.00 - Bara Kolenc - MEMOARS
17.30 - Simona Semenič - I, VICTIM
18.00 - Goran Sergej Pristaš - MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS ... PERFORMANCE NOTES
19.30 - Matjaž Zupančič - THE LOVES OF MY GRANDMOTHER
20.00 - Goran Bogdanovski - JANEZ/JOHN/JEAN
21.30 - Jurij Konjar - ULYSSES
22.00 - Via Negativa - INCASSO
Saturday, May 17
13.00 - John Webster & Simona Semenič, Ivan Talijančić - MALFI17.00 - Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Waltl - THUMBELINA
17.30 - Janez Janša - SLOVENE NATIONAL THEATRE
19.00 - Goran Bogdanovski - JANEZ/JOHN/JEAN
19.30 - OOUR - CREATION OF EVE
20.00 - Brothers Grimm, Vito Taufer - SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
22.00 - Mateja Bučar - ROOM&ROAD
Sunday, May 18
11.00 - Katja Kähkönen - BEAUTY OR THE BEAST?12.00 - Gregor Luštek and Rosana Hribar - DANCE ME OUT, PLEASE!
14.00 - Barbara Novakovič - WINTER'S TALE
17.00 - Katja Kähkönen - BEAUTY OR THE BEAST
17.00 - Aleksander Sergejevich Pushkin, Aleksander Anurov - THE STORY OF THE TSAR SALTAN
19.00 - Herve Guibert, Ivica Buljan - YOUNG FLESH
19.00 - Goran Bogdanovski - JANEZ/JOHN/JEAN
20.00 - Tanja Skok - BASSA CONTINUA
Off Programme Details
Heiner Müller, Ivica Buljan - QUARTETT
May 15 at 22.00
Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče, Stara pošta
Duration: 60 minutes
As two versions of Heiner Müller's Quartet will be presented during the IETM Plenary Meeting in Ljubljana, we can assume that the text presents quite a challenge to theatre artists. This version is directed by Ivica Buljan and staged at Mini theatre, the mission statement of which makes clear that it is not only a theatre for children’s productions but also for post-dramatic theatre. The two protagonists in the play are placed in a set (much noted and praised by critics) that gives the impression of anxiety, constriction, reticence, and past glamour. The two protagonists are left to deal with confrontation and ending.
Production: Mini teater
Brothers Grimm, Vito Taufer - SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
May 17 at 20.00Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Duration: 75 minutes
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a classic fairytale that has been enjoyed in many versions both in Slovenia and the wider world, the best-known of which are the Grimm Brothers’ story and the Disney cartoon. Although in his version, Vito Taufer otherwise follows the “standard”, well-known starting point of the fairytale, the story takes place in a completely new fairytale world, not childlike and sweet, but interpretatively open. The quality of the performance is greatly enhanced by the excellent acting skills of the entire company.
Vito Taufer has been the house director of Slovensko mladinsko gledališče since 1989. He also works in many other theatres in Slovenia. His directorial opus extends from classical theatre to contemporary Slovenian plays.
Production: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Mateja Bučar - ROOM&ROAD
May 17 at 21.30
Venue: Dvorana Tabor
Duration: 50 minutes
Room&Road is the interaction of dancers with a living space which is comprised of computer-generated projections. These projections, along with innovative lighting solutions, transform the space. The projections create the illusion of walls and floors that move, spin, and even disappear, of various shifting coordinates that different forces use as physical points in their movements. The manipulation of the projections is done live with a computer and thus is an active co-creator of the performance. The two dancers constantly move through these new spaces.
The DUM association is a cultural organisation that unites artists from various fields of contemporary arts: performing arts, visual arts, interdisciplinary arts and art theories and critics … Vadim Fiškin works under the auspices of DUM as does the Gregor Podnar Galerija. Mateja Bučar is a ballet and contemporary dancer; she was one of the first members of Ljubljana’s Plesni teater. Her last two productions were The Brothers Karamozov, Volume 1 and Volume 2 – Made in China.
Production: DUM –Association of Artists
Janez Janša - SLOVENE NATIONAL THEATRE
May 17 at 17.30
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Kosovelova dvorana
Duration: 80 minutes
This is a performance that deals with sonic dimensions of mass political rage. Slovene National Theatre reconstructs a real historical event: the political demonstrations that took place in certain Slovenian villages in 2006 and protested against coexistence with the Roma community. The story of the conflict between the two communities, which was a sensational media event, is enacted through the theatrical forms of an antique chorus, radio play, and television and radio broadcasts. The combination of classical theatrical forms and contemporary media involvement culminates to create a deeply moving theatrical event and once again opens the question of tragedy in our time.
Production: Maska
Co-production: Aksioma – institute for contemporary arts
Herve Guibert, Ivica Buljan - YOUNG FLESH
May 18 at 19.00
Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Duration: 145 minutes
Young Flesh, a short novel by Hervé Guibert, narrates, in an enigmatic and bantering style, the story of events that took place in northern France. Specifically, it tells the story of a priest who, immediately after his arrival in a new parish, encounters a mystery and morality play conducted by a “gang of four”: a carpenter, a butcher’s sister, an owner of an ale-house, and a road mender. This quartet has ruled the village for many years, sowing fear and suffering. In his exposure of the scandal in Normandy, Guibert is both scalpel-sharp and humorous as he erodes accepted moral-ethical clichés. The performance takes place in three different halls of Slovensko mladinsko gledališče, and Buljan enhances the script with his characteristic directorial style.
Production: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Goran Bogdanovski - JANEZ/JOHN/JEAN
May 16 at 20.00, May 17 and 18 at 19.00
Venue: Gledališče Glej
Duration: 20 minutes
John is a dance solo about John. During the creative tour of the performance, Janez changes into John, back to Janez, and then into Иван: Ljubljana, New York, Ljubljana, Moscow… Goran Bogdanovski is John, researching character together with director, Tomi Janežič. Bogdanovski passes through many embodiments: everything from a skinny boy to a Superhero to a Ghandi-like figure. With reference points in sound/music, John captures a palette of characters, his body and emotions changing before our eyes and captivating the viewer who cannot help but wonder what inner emotion is driving him. Is this the reverse of “method acting”, making his body do things and only later discovering the emotions? Who is John in your country?
Goran Bogdanovski is a choreographer, dancer, performer, teacher, and the artistic director of Fičo Ballet company. His early roots are in ballet and later ones in contemporary dance. He has collaborated with more than seventy choreographers and directors. He is the founder of Fičo Ballet. With several partners, he co-founded Gibanica, a Slovenian dance platform. He is one of the driving forces behind the educational research project, Nomad Dance Academy. His most frequently performed works are 1:0, Švic in švarc, Confi-dance…
Co-production: Fičo Ballet and Studio for research on art of acting
Goran Sergej Pristaš - MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS ... PERFORMANCE NOTES
May 16 at 18.00Venue: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana
Duration: 90 minutes
Memories Are Made Of This... Performance Notes is a project that metaphorically travels through the complex topology of memory. It takes the name of a popular Dean Martin song while at the same time exercising F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” BADco. approaches the topic of memory via a process that is intrinsic to it – forgetting – thus suggesting two possible ways of entering this complex subject matter. It chooses the path of vacuity, blankness, deletion, and later, mental fissures, and emotional crack-ups. The project operates as a notebook, a collection of performance notes, and/or notes for a performance.
In 2000, BADco. was founded by Pravdan Devlahović, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, and Ivana Sajko. BADco. is a collaborative performance group from Zagreb. Their work is characterised less by choice of theme than by the production of problems, in other words the exploration of certain questions through specific methods of artistic self-organisation in the work process. The artists conceive of their work as a performance machine that can be plugged into various contexts (social, political, intimate, dance, and artistic).
Production: BADco.
In co-production with: Intercult, Stockholm; Student Center - Culture of Change and Teatar &TD, Zagreb; Theorem supported by Culture 2000
Barbara Novakovič - WINTER'S TALE
May 18 at 14.00
Venue: Križanke, Viteška dvorana
Duration: 60 minutes
Barbara Novakovič Kolenc retains only the framework of events from Shakespeare’s original Winter’s Tale and then transforms the work into an airy and playful stroll through human relations. The stage set resembles a corridor behind the gossamer, a transitional space where kings, queens, their children, and others meet. The first, quite dark, part deals with royal pride, the resulting sadness and tragedy of it, and then relaxes into a cathartic ending of singing and dance.
Barbara Novakovič Kolenc is a director, actor, producer, set designer, and curator. In 1993, she established the Muzeum Theatre which later was formalized as the Muzeum Institute, a production house for performances, visual projects, and publishing. Kolenc’s creativity is characterised by linking the theatre to other artistic fields: music, movements, visual arts….
Production: Muzeum, Ljubljana
Co-production: Festival Ljubljana
Snježana Premuš - YOU. STORIES OF THE BODY 3
May 16 at 17.00
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 55 minutes
Stories of the Body is a creative cycle by Snježana Premuš that explores physicality and the body in dance. In the first piece in the cycle, Snježana Premuš deals with the body in conflict with itself as well as harmony in the body and with the body. The second piece in the cycle puts the female body in the foreground and also represents it in counterpoint to the male body. In the third piece, the body opens itself outward, in relation to others, in search of its own authenticity. A duet explores the borders between two bodies and their mutual possibilities.
Snježana Premuš is from Maribor, Slovenia. This is also where she began dancing, though she was later trained at the London Contemporary Dance School in contemporary dance and choreography. She has worked with Plesna izba Maribor, YELP Dance Co., EN KNAP, Mark Thompkins… Her chorographical projects are developing in two directions: the first is Stories of the Body, and the second is a series of projects called “from scratch” that explore the relationship between movement and sound. (Amplified Body is part of this second cycle.)
Production: Zavod Exodos Ljubljana
Co-production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana
John Webster & Simona Semenič, Ivan Talijančić - MALFI
May 17 at 13.00
Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Duration: 90 minutes
Simona Semenič has taken the nearly four-hundred year old text by John Webster and transformed and reworked it. Ivan Talijančić has staged a contemporary vision of the Duchess of Malfi who, because of love, marries someone from a lower class, a choice that eventually leads her to violence and tragedy.
Ivan Talijančič is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked for the last decade mostly in New York. Along with Erica Latta and Dion Doulis, he founded the WaxFactory which is an open art structure with a fixed core and rotating contributors. It works with various collaborators in Europe and the United States. In Slovenia, WaxFactory has performed Cleansed, She Said, Delirium 27.
Simona Semenič is a director, dramaturge, and actress. Since last year, she has been director of Glej Theatre in Ljubljana, where she also runs the program PreGlej and is involved with the staged readings of texts of less established Slovenian playwrights. Her last performance I, victim is a monodrama in which she herself acts. She is the author of a number of important dramatic texts: Solo brez talona, Socks, Loving Willy, 24hours, More ...
Production: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Waltl - THUMBELINA
May 17 at 17.00
Venue: Ljubljana Castle, Mini Teater
Duration: 40 minutes
A performance for children three years and older.
Thumbelina is a classic children's story. It is a traditional fairytale in which the heroine overcomes a number of difficulties, in the end winning a beautiful life and the partner of her dreams and, thus, escaping from her position as outsider. This virtual puppet show uses a mixture of film and puppet performance in a virtual computer environment. The fairytale characters come to life on the screen with the help of an animator, and the audience assists the animator in extricating the heroine from her difficult situations. The open and malleable quality of the virtual space lends the classic Anderson fairytale a rich creative environment as well as possibilities of active engagement of the young audience.
Robert Waltl and Ivica Buljan founded Mini teater in 1999 and, since then, have staged propulsive theatre with rich and varied productions. In addition to its series of post-dramatic theatre pieces, the principal creative and productive power of the theatre is directed toward performances for children, and especially puppet shows. Mini theater’s repertoire of children’s performances encompasses both classic world literature and Slovenian original texts. The organisation is characterised by its reach, its high-quality international activity, and the festival Mini poletje.
Production: Mini teater
Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Waltl - THE UGLY DUCKLING
May 16 at 11.00Venue: Ljubljana Castle, Mini Teater
Duration: 50 minutes
A performance for children three years and older.
This classic Danish fairytale follows its protagonist, a duckling who is so ugly that nobody likes him, along his journey of transformation from an ugly little duckling to a magnificent swan, from a sad helpless thing to a tolerant and patient creature. Three actors enact this transformation, as well as a whole range of figures who accompany the duckling on his journey.
Robert Waltl and Ivica Buljan founded Mini teater in 1999 and, since then, have staged propulsive theatre with a range of rich productions. In addition to its series of post-dramatic theatre pieces, the principal creative and proactive power of the theatre is directed toward performances for children, and especially puppet shows. Mini theater’s repertoire of children’s performances encompasses both classic world literature and Slovenian original texts. The organisation is characterised by its reach, its high-quality international activity, and the festival Mini poletje.
Production: Mini teater
Aleksander Sergejevich Pushkin, Aleksander Anurov - THE STORY OF THE TSAR SALTAN
May 18 at 17.00Venue: Ljubljana Castle, Mini Teater
Duration: 55 minutes
A performance for children four years and older
Pushkin based his story of the Tsar Saltan on Russian folktales. In his story, he magnificently describes the Tsar, his beautiful wife, and their son, the Tsarevich Gvidon, whose jealous aunts send him into exile, and who is finally brought, with the help of the sea, to a lovely young Tsarina who is a swan. The performance, which features both puppets and actors, is directed by Aleksandar Anurov, a director from Pushkin’s homeland. He and his team created a performance which won the 2005 Gran Prix award at the Slovenian Biennial of Puppeteers and has thrilled both children and critics alike.
Robert Waltl and Ivica Buljan founded Mini teater in 1999 and, since then, have staged propulsive theatre with a range of rich productions. In addition to its series of post-dramatic theatre pieces, the principal creative and proactive power of the theatre is directed toward performances for children, and especially puppet shows. Mini theater’s repertoire of children’s performances encompasses both classic world literature and Slovenian original texts. The organisation is characterised by its reach, its high-quality international activity, and the festival Mini poletje.
Production: Mini Teater Ljubljana, Novo kazalište Zagreb, Arl Dubrovnik
Luis Sepulveda, Blažka Muller Pograjc, Matjaž Pograjc - LUCKY & ZORBA
May 15 at 17.00
Venue: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana
Duration: 45 minutes
For children five years and older.
Matjaž Pograjc, having directed Winnie the Pooh and Peter Rabbit, has already staged several fairytales with animals as characters. In this performance, the main character is the cat Zorba, a big fat harbour cat who finds himself in the situation of hatching a seagull egg and becoming ….a mama! How can you teach a bird to fly when you’re a cat? The imaginative setting of the port and the slang speech of the cat and his companions give the show a special flair.
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre was founded in 1948, after the Second World War. The theatre continued the puppeteering tradition that had started to blossom in Slovenia during the 1920s. The theatre has maintained this basic direction through the decades that followed, producing performances for children, steering from classical to contemporary texts and then back again. Roughly half of the theatre’s productions are of Slovenian works, while the other half draws from international stories and the treasure trove of fairytales.
Production: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana
Katja Kähkönen - BEAUTY OR THE BEAST?
Friday, May 16 at 17.00, Sunday, May 18, at 11.00 and 17.00
Venue: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana
Duration: not known yet
Things are not always what they seem. This is the motto of the performance, which through the connection of a girl, Bella, and a boy, Monstel, explores questions of human relations, of this friendship specifically, and the game of discovery they play as they learn their own qualities, as well as the inner qualities of the beauty and the beast.
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre was founded in 1948, after the Second World War. The theatre continued the puppeteering tradition that had started to blossom in Slovenia during the 1920s. The theatre has maintained this basic direction through the decades that have followed, producing performances for children, steering from classical to contemporary texts and then back again. Roughly half of the theatre’s productions are of Slovenian works, while the other half draws from international stories and the treasure trove of fairytales.
Production: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana
Badalucca, Medioli, Visconti, Diego de Brea - THE DAMNED
May 15 at 20.00
Venue: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Duration: 110 minutes
The story begins on the February night in 1933 when the Reichstag burned down, ends after the famed Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, and describes the disintegration of a German family in the time of the Nazi campaign. It is a story in which danger propels a wild courage and lends romantic beauty to what is demonic. It is a story in which events master man and not the other way around. A story that is endlessly exciting, hypnotic, magnificent, monumental, strange, bizarre, and also crazy, sublime, and hotly sensual….The shattering narrative of the von Essenbeck family, a drama based on Visconti’s cult film.
Diego de Brea studied comparative literature, art history, and theatre directing at the Ljubljana Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. His thesis performance Obločnica, ki se rojeva was rewarded at the 1999 International Theatre Festival of student productions in Brno. De Brea is the creator of important productions in Slovenian repertory and non-institutional theatres. He has tackled many different genres: plays for young people, puppet theatre, author’s projects, classical and contemporary texts, everything up to music vaudeville. In Italy, he directed the author’s project Leonora using Wagner’s motifs with the opera singer Eleonora Jankovich. His works have been performed at home and abroad.
Production: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče
Tanja Skok - BAROQUE
May 15 at 21.30
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 55 minutes
In this work, baroque is a metaphor and at the same time a strongly visible and audible artistic reference, an artistic expression. Contemporary music in general has strong references to the baroque canon. Even its dance expression can be contemporary as Tanja Skok “translates” baroque courtly dance steps into a more modern language and looser choreography. The baroque idiom in these new clothes is revealed as surprisingly modern and spectacular.
Tanja Skok received her education at the London Contemporary Dance School. From 1996 on, her work has included artistic leadership, instruction and choreography at the Intact Dance Studio, the teaching of contemporary dance techniques at the art high school, and providing contemporary dance and other collaboration in many musical, visual arts, and film projects. She first got acquainted with historic dance forms during her studies in London, and began to work intensively with them in 2003, when she started training with known European experts in the area of Renaissance dance (Barbara Sparti, Veronique Daniels, Lieven Baert, Bruna Gondoni) and baroque dance (Marie Genevieve Masse, Cecilia Gracio Moura, Beatrice Massin, Françoise Denieau).
Production : Plesni Teater Ljubljana
Via Negativa - NOT LIKE ME
May 15 at 20.30
Venue: Glej
Duration: 60 minutes
Not Like Me is from a performance cycle about the seven mortal sins, and depicts what is apparently a special mortal sin since Via Negativa has dealt it in two distinct productions: once in the piece Four Deaths, and a second time in Not Like Me. This is a performance about a performance that destroys itself. The work theatricalises envy as the quality that triumphs in relationships between performers within the performance that we are watching. A knife game is the last action in the piece, bringing the narrative to the point when all that remains relevant is blood. It is precisely this blood that has challenged the public and critics to search for subtext, finding everything from national conflict to dramas from antiquity in the production.
Bojan Jablanovec is a theatre director. In 2002, he began the cycle Via Negativa which is a form of collective creation and education, as he also organises workshops. Via Negativa is a cycle of performances each of which has as its starting point one of the human qualities that from the Christian perspective are conceived of as mortal sins. The performances function as a collage, the actors’ artistic contributions being pieces in a puzzle. As director, Jablanovec conceptually links them. This year, the cycle will be concluded with the performance Via Nova which will gather together all of the performers and material from previous performances.
Production: Via Negativa, Zalet Zadar, Festival Zadar Snova
Matjaž Zupančič - THE LOVES OF MY GRANDMOTHER
May 16 at 19.30
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 60 minutes
Just the title of the piece The Loves of my Grandmother gives an impression of nostalgia and sentimentality. Nevertheless, it is a humorous and erudite search into the minds of the four protagonists, using the register of male-female relationships, as well as their specific poses and perspectives. Men, and other loves of grandmother, do not appear on stage. They only live through the stories of the four women who, though gestures and words, understand the grandmother as the connection between past and present. Men are mere props on the stage, marionettes in the “gestural explanations” of the women.
Dramatist, director, teacher, and writer, Matjaž Zupančič studied theatre direction and dramaturgy. After graduating in Ljubljana, he continued his directorial studies in London with the support of the British Council. During the first half of the 1980s, he ran the experimental theatre Glej, which at that time was the focal point of alternative theatre in Ljubljana. Later he dedicated himself to directing theatre, writing, and teaching. He is the author of two novels and ten plays (Izganjalci hudiča, Slastni mrlič, Nemir, Ubijalci muh, Vladimir, Goli pianist, Hodnik, Bolje tič v roki kot tat na strehi, Igra s pari, Razred) that have been staged in Ljubljana and internationally. He is among the most frequently performed Slovenian playwrights on international stages. He has directed more than forty works in Slovenian theatres (the most important ones being Gluvić’ Hardcore, Majcen’s Apocalypse, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Smole’s Antigone, Shakespeare’s King Lear and Hamlet, Mamet’s Oleanna, Jesih’s Ljubiti, Weiss’ Marat/Sade, Karge’s Kožo z obraza, Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, Bourke’s Gagarin Way, Rose’s Twelve Angry Men, and his own Vladimir, Goli pianist, Hodnik ...)
Production: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Via Negativa - INCASSO
May 16 at 22.00
Venue: Glej
Duration: 60 minutes
The performance Incasso is from the cycle Via Negative and takes greed as its mortal sin. Greed is not understood as a property of the performance, but of the performers themselves. As with its other performance pieces, Via Negativa does not take a moral stance toward the chosen sin but only dissects it. In the form of an entrance fee, performers collect money from the audience that they then use as material in the performance. The performance stops the normal circulation of this money with the intention of illustrating not its exchange value, but the intimate relationship we have to money.
Bojan Jablanovec is a theatre director. In 2002, he began the cycle Via Negativa which is a form of collective creation and education, as he also organises workshops. Via Negativa is a cycle of performances each of which has as its starting point one of the human qualities that from the Christian perspective are conceived of as mortal sins. The performances function as a collage, the actors’ artistic contributions being pieces in a puzzle. As director, Jablanovec conceptually links them. This year, the cycle will be concluded with the performance Via Nova which will gather together all of the performers and material from previous performances.
Production: Via Negativa
Co-production: Glej Theatre Ljubljana, Cultural Centre Novi Sad (Serbia)
Partner: INFANT International Festival of Alternative and New Theatre Novi Sad (Serbia)
Tanja Skok - BASSA CONTINUA
May 18 at 20.00
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 40 minutes
This piece is inspired by the Renaissance, and particularly the bassa dance, an early Renaissance form mentioned in Spanish poem in which the king declines an invitation to dance with Death. This dance form is combined with visual impressions from the 15th century fresco Danse Macabre. Two protagonists appear on the stage, acting out the dramatic arc with movement and, at the end, with words. The “eternal dance” between men and women is also a continual encounter with life itself.
Tanja Skok received her education at the London Contemporary Dance School. From 1996 on, her work has included artistic leadership, instruction and choreography at the Intact Dance Studio, the teaching of contemporary dance techniques at the Art High School, and providing contemporary dance and other collaboration in many musical, visual arts, and film projects. She first got acquainted with historic dance forms during her studies in London, and began to work intensively with them in 2003, when she started training with known European experts in the area of Renaissance dance (Barbara Sparti, Veronique Daniels, Lieven Baert, Bruna Gondoni) and Baroque dance (Marie Genevieve Masse, Cecilia Gracio Moura, Beatrice Massin, Françoise Denieau).
Production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana
OOUR - CREATION OF EVE
May 17 at 19.30Venue: Mestno gledališče ljubljansko (Mala scena)
Duration: 60 minutes
The creators of this production place two dancers’ bodies into the breach. The two bodies on stage alternate between two extreme possibilities of dance: dance as drill, as the harmonious movement of the body, as form, and; dance as content, dance as a means of bodily expression that becomes narrative and defines the person. The two bodies on the stage repeat the same series of movements. Minimal changes in the repetitions shift the perception of the viewer and the lack of definition challenges the viewer to interpret, reflect, and input.
The creative initiative OOUR was conceived by a group of choreographers in different dance disciplines who wanted to research the borders of their own artistic predispositions and the friction within certain given concepts. OOUR has produced the following projects: Limb, blackbox-the first box, orangecut, to be confirmed, H, Stvarajući Eve, Salon, Chew and Whotebox.
Production: OOUR
Co-production: Platforma Eksperimentalne svobodne scene, TRANSWARP foundation
Bojan Jablanovec - FOUR DEATHS
May 15 at 19.00
Venue: Glej
Duration: 75 minutes
The performance piece Four Deaths is from the cycle Via Negativa. Envy is the mortal sin taken as the starting point for this performance. Four performers stage four deaths. Katarina Stegnar murders Pina Bausch; Grega Zorc kills Tim Etchells; Barbara Kukovec, La Ribot; Petra Zanki, Marina Abramović. With a conscious attempt at re-creation, the four performers tackle the object of their envy: the work of art. By taking the place of the viewers, they stand before the audience as both substitute and original.
Bojan Jablanovec is a theatre director. In 2002, he began the cycle Via Negativa which is a form of collective creation and education, as it also organizes workshops. Via Negativa is a cycle of performances each of which has as its starting point one of the human qualities that from the Christian perspective are conceived of as mortal sins. The performances function as a collage, the actors’ artistic contributions being pieces in a puzzle. As director, Jablanovec conceptually links them. This year, the cycle will be concluded with the performance Via Nova which will gather together all of the performers and material from previous performances.
Production: Via Negativa
Co-production: Glej Theatre Ljubljana
Maja Delak - SERATA ARTISTICA GIOVANILE
May 15 at 20.30
Venue: Cankarjev dom, Linhartova dvorana
Duration: 90 minutes
The premiere of Serata artistica giovanile will take place one week before the IETM meeting. The basis of the work is defined in the following dramaturgical statement: “The starting point for Serata artistica giovanile, the new work by choreographer Maja Delak, is the expressionistic piano composition entitled Bagatelles, full of fragments and complex dynamics, by the Slovenian composer Marij Kogoj. In addition to Kogoj’s musical work, the piece is inspired by the avant-garde artist Ferdo Delak and his project Serata artistica giovanile, which Ferdo Delak understands as ‘a chorographical sketch of stage life.’ Through the prism of seven dynamic landscapes, the performers research ways of articulating physicality within the stain/noise of social and political contemporary themes and thus reveal a dynamic human figure that ceaselessly interacts and communicates with its environment. The dialogue between the live performance of Marij Kogoj’s music and the contemporary modulated resonances of the visual landscape creates a living picture where avant-garde ideas penetrate the contemporary body and become a manifest declaration of the moment.”
Production: Zavod EMANAT
Co-production: Cankarjev dom Ljubljana, Zavod Projekt Atol Ljubljana
Bara Kolenc - MEMOARS
May 16 at 17.00
Venue: Glej
Duration: 40 minutes
The wider framework of the piece Memoars revolves around questions of memory and forgetting. It is linked to experience and the research of a past anchored in the mind in the form of stories, scenes, blurry and recast events, and connected to a relationship that doesn’t even exist anymore. The narrow framework is provided by memories of Bara’s grandfather. The performance, dance mixed with occasional monologue, takes place within a beautiful set that functions as the very structure of memory: a structure layered in gorgeous order, covering the entire stage, in which a blast of wind creates ever new shapes.
Bara Kolenc is a dancer and choreographer. As an independent artist, she has created six full-length performances: Bela (White, 1998), Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain, 2000), Razobraz (Faceapart, 2001), Brezdno (Bottomless, 2004), Incisio Rubida (2005), and Memoari (Memoars, 2006). She has received numerous awards and honours for her work. She is writing her doctorate in theatre theory and works as a mentor at DIC’s Kreatorij. She is currently preparing a performance piece about the Slovenian artist, Ivan Mrak.
Production: Kud Samosvoj
Co-production: Gledališče Glej, Kud Pozitiv
In collaboration with: Bunker, Ljubljana
Jurij Konjar - ULYSSES
May 16 at 21.30
Venue: ZRC SAZU
Duration: 50 minutes
Choosing the Odysseus journey as the basis and starting point of creation is a task almost as difficult as embarking on an odyssey oneself. Both the reference texts, Homer’s and Joyce’s, present long voyages through countless supplementary meanings. Jurij Konjar tackles this task courageously, making all the preparations for a long journey and for the enjoyable stops along the way. He presents the viewers with a dialogue between movement and images, and invites them to travel along. The performance takes place in the atrium of an old building since we must first travel back to the place where everything began.
Jurij Konjar is a contemporary dancer and choreographer. He made his performance debut in Slovenia with the male trio Catharsis. Now he is working under the wings of the Exodos production house. He began to choreograph dance works while still very young, and his creations are serious and searching, both capturing and nurturing youthful inquisitiveness. He is courageous in his artistic exploration and has tackled a palette of diverse themes: relationships (Real Mistakes), the impact of geopolitics (Armenia-Belgium-Slovenia in the performance Documentaryc), and the confrontation with open spaces (Open Space Hotel)…
Production: Zavod Exodos
Gregor Luštek and Rosana Hribar - DANCE ME OUT, PLEASE!
May 18 at 12.00
Venue: Plesni teater Ljubljana
Duration: 60 minutes
The choreographers Gregor Luštek and Rosana Hribar often work in tandem. Their duet, Ana Is the Name of the Rose, was one of the most beautiful lyric duets performed on the stage of Plesni teater Ljubljana. In their works, they strive for creativity itself; the subtitle they give the work is “dance experiment”. The dancers on the stage play with dance stereotypes, while at the same time trying to break out of them or deconstruct them. The piece contains a strong dose of humour, part of the “analysis” of itself and the state of dance.
Gregor Luštek and Rosana Hribar are contemporary dancers and choreographers. They have performed in many dance and theatrical projects and they also work as educators. The work Dance Me Out, Please! was created in Serbia. Gregor Luštek and Rosana Hribar received first prize at the Festival of Ballet Miniatures and thus secured the production of the piece and its staging at the Belgrade summer festival BELEF.
Production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana
Co-produced by: BELEF Centar, Serbia
Simona Semenič - I, VICTIM
May 16 at 17.30Duration: 30 minutes
Venue: Galerija Alkatraz
English language performance.
I, Victim. by the author and performer Simona Semenič is a show about a young woman who has lived through an incredibly broad collection of illnesses. The performance is based on her own experience with ailments that are either socially taboo or at least carry a stigma.
During her undergraduate years, Simona Semenič, now a graduate stage director, had already collaborated with SNG Nova Gorica and Mestno gledališče ljubljansko. She is the director of Gledališče Glej while also stage directing, and playwrighting (Solo without Talon, More, 24hours, Loving Willy and Socks). She collaborates primarily with directors Ivan Talijančić and Rok Vevar. She also directed the Slovenian adaptation of Endless
Medication by Marijs Boulogne. She leads the PreGlej project that is involved with the development and international promotion of contemporary Slovenian drama.
Production: City of Women
Jaša Jenull , Vida Bren Cerkvenik - KORUN’S DEATH
May 16 at 13.30
Duration: 60 minutes
Venue Lieu: Gledališče Glej
Slovene language performance.
This “post-modern collage in mixed media” is a project created by two young directors driven by “the need to liberate the theatrical process and their own artistic integrity from the yoke of the academic and the received.” The Ljud Group is a collective that combines theatre professionals and amateurs under the principal of gesamtkunstwerk. Its works are structured as open in terms of genre and communication with the audience. Ciklus Ljud is a cycle of performances of which we have already seen Cirkus Ljud, Biti John Barth (Being
John Barth) Korun’s Death and Dejanje s klobukom (Act with a Hat).
Vida Bren Cerkvenik is a graduate of AGRFT, the Ljubljana Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. She has created, independently or in collaboration with members of other creative teams, more than 25 original theatre projects. She collaborates with the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, is a co-founder of the Ljud Group, and a member of the artistic leadership of the Šentjakob theatre. Jaša Jenull, a graduate of AGRFT, has dedicated himself to the medium of radio, and has created, directed, acted, designed lighting or sound for more than 25 different
theatrical events. In 2006, he, Vida Bren Cerkvenik, and Marko Bratuš took over the artistic leadership of the Šentjakob theatre. He is a founding member of the Ljud Group.
Production: Gledališče Glej
Artistic Itineraries - Overview
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30
Mesto umetnic/City of Artists
Teci k ljubezni/Run for Love
Festival pomladi/Spring Festival
Urbana interpretacija/Urban Interpretation
Živeti na meji/Living on the Border
Tekoče/ležerno skozi Ljubljano/Flow Through Ljubljana
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30
Srečna družina/Happy Family
Mesto umetnic/City of Artists
Teci k ljubezni/Run for Love
Symbiogarden
Mesto žensk-Vitamini za kreativni duh in uporabljeno telo!/City of Women–Vitamins for the Creative Soul and the Used Body
Festival pomladi/Spring Festival
Urbana interpretacija/Urban Interpretation
Trenirane in spontane koreografije protesta/Workout and Spontaneous Choreographic Protest
Let's Get Loud!
Živeti na meji/Living on the Border
Sunday, May 18, 15.00-17.00
Skušnja svobode telesa/Rehearsing Freedom of the Body
Rdeči revirji/Red Beats (until 19.00)
Symbiogarden
Praznovanje/Celebration
Tekoče/ležerno skozi Ljubljano/Flow Through Ljubljana
Artistic Itineraries - Details
Rehearsing Freedom in the City - Artistic itineraries through Ljubljana
Starting point of all itineraries: Slovenski etnografski muzej
Srečna družina/Happy Family
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30
The opening of the exhibit entitled Happy Family and a conversation with the artist. In her work, Dejana Vučićević deals with middle-class family happiness in the former Yugoslav space. Using frozen images from twentieth century family photographs, she analyses the careful composition of family members and the community that surrounds them. The event will be spiced up along the way to the gallery and will include, of course, a “party-like” opening.
Skušnja svobode telesa/Rehearsing Freedom of the Body
Sunday, May 18, 15.00-17.00
Plasma is the training of physical intelligence. We are offering IETMers a time of relaxation, presentation of ourselves, and socialising. If the weather is good, we will move though the park, otherwise under the rooftops. No experience is necessary. The training will be led by Gregor Kamnikar, a contemporary dancer, choreographer, and researcher of physical intelligence.
Mesto umetnic/City of Artists
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30
Leja Jurišič and Teja Reba, both dancers and choreographers, will take the participants on a tour through the city as they experience it. A mixture of past and the present, those that lead and those that observe, and last but not least the hidden parts of the city that exist only if we awaken them: this will be the common thread of the itinerary. Hidden passageways, parks, cross streets, and cultural points in Ljubljana. We will visit the cultural and non-cultural, the personal and collective, intersections of past and present in our voyage through the city.
Teci k ljubezni/Run for Love
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30
Betontanc, Matej Andraž Vogrinčič, and Ez3ekiel are preparing a project that will re-enact a famous scene from the Battleship Potemkin using ten thousand slinkys: the flight to love, to a better life. The spectacle will unite the big scale project with the intimacy of horror and of love, it will unite the pop approach to address everybody and a multilayered performance and the seriousness needed for the time we live in. Our guide through the city will be M. A. Vogrinčič, the visual artist who dressed houses, decorated a desert with buckets, and brought an enchanted forest to the centre of Ljubljana. On the way he will also present the project, and at the end of the itinerary, will unleash the slinkys. We will all be allowed to play with them.
Rdeči revirji/Red Beats
Sunday, May 18, 15.00-19.00
Hrastnik is the home of Branko Potočan, contemporary dancer and founder of the group Fourklor, and also the home of the Red Beats Festival. This itinerary features an outing into the Hrastnik mine and all its attendant folklore: a shot of brandy before changing clothes and the descent into the mine. At the same time, it allows a direct look into the connection of movement, dance, and stage props with the roots of the artist.
Symbiogarden
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30, and Sunday May 18, 15.00-17.00
Culture is also horticulture. The phenomenon of Slovenian gardening will be introduced (also city gardening) as well as the project Symbiogarden, which is an architectural prototype for raising plants in the city. The tour of the gardens will also have a practical aspect: participants will have a chance to dig into the soil.
Mesto žensk-Vitamini za kreativni duh in uporabljeno telo!/City of Women–Vitamins for the Creative Soul and the Used Body
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30The City of Women team invites you to relax with the Slovenian female artists who have been collaborating with the festival in various modes for the last fourteen years. Chatting with the artists and mixing vitamin cocktails, the team will present the activities of the City of Women festival. This will be followed by performance of Simona Semenič’ I, Victim, in English and DJane Kuroko will play the rhythms of local and international musicians. We will take a look at Metelkova City on the way.
Festival pomladi/Spring Festival
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30 Martin Bricelj, a media artist and cofounder of the Codeep.Org team, will take the participants to the base of a new residential programme MOTA -Museum of Temporary Art, where he will present his project RoboVox- Your voice, which will appear in Ljubljana in June. At the same time, it will be possible to meet the first residential female artist, the Finnish artist SOLU. On the way to Slovenska Street, where the walk will finish with a presentation of Festival of Spring, and Martin Bricelj will also present his last project, Public Avatar.
Urbana interpretacija/Urban Interpretation
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30 The conceptual starting point of this arts-communication intervention in the public space is the idea of space as belonging to everybody. The tour will strive to give visitors a feeling of belonging, to provoke questions, to arouse interest and creative excitement. The city itself, its buildings and streets as social witness, narrates a story to passers-by about peace and searching, poetry and erasure, coffee and gas… through the eyes and outline of Studio Poper.
Trenirane in spontane koreografije protesta/Workout and Spontaneous Choreographic Protest
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30In a demonstration that is something between a lecture and a performance, we will compare planned versus spontaneous choreographic protests. This issue was debated in the magazine Maska and in a Maska seminar on contemporary performing arts. The latter led to the emergence of the Janez Janša’s performance Slovenian National Theatre, which, through an audio reconstruction, has as its subject the demonstration against the Roma in the Slovenian village of Ambrus in autumn of 2006. Along the route, three areas of activity (publishing, seminars, and production) will be presented.
Praznovanje/Celebration
Sunday, May 18, 15.00-17.00 Dragana Alfirević and Dejan Srhoj, both dancers and choreographers, met at the IETM meeting at the Dom Omladine in Belgrade. Together with their little daughter Doroteja they invite you to a tea party at Špica, a quiet spot on the banks of the Ljubljanica River. We will celebrate IETM, new family, and new projects.
Let's Get Loud!
Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30The introduction to this itinerary will be a performance in which well-known European performers are replaced by children. Sound artist, Tomaž Grom, and producer, Špela Trošt, will videotape the audience while reading a short text that unfolds in several languages simultaneously. The tapes will be used as material for an audio work-in-progress.
Živeti na meji/Living on the Border
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Friday, May 16, 16.30-18.30 Members of the Kitch collective will take you to the Permanent Waiting Room, which is a part of the international project, Living on the Border. The waiting room is a space of debate and artistic activity. The Kitch Group is involved in researching the phenomenon of contemporary migration in Europe and the European Union.
Tekoče/ležerno skozi Ljubljano/Flow Through Ljubljana
Thursday, May 15, 15.30-17.30, and Sunday, May 18, 15.00-17.00 Artists are familiar with the most beautiful mysteries of Ljubljana: riverside streets, the shade of a romantic tree, a glass of beer on the corner, a boat ride complete with dance and music. Bara Kolenc, Borut Bučinel, both dancers and choreographers, and other members of the art associations KUD Samosvoj and KUD Pozitiv, will walk you through their Ljubljana, recall memories with you, and show you places that inspire or merely offer a relaxed afternoon.
