The performance draws on the rich iconography of sleeping depictions from the Old (Ezekiel, Job) and New Testament and is based on texts by Descartes, St. Augustine and some other literary sources and visual artists who have studied sleep. Occasionally, the project opens the doors for so‑called sweet dreams, nightmares, and daydreaming.

On the one hand, there is pressure to put the action to sleep, and on the other, the need is emerging to stay awake. The performer travels from scene to scene through the names of literary heroes and images from the history of art, simultaneously living in dreams and daydreaming awake. The mental framework of the performance is the realm of dreams, where imagination and sensuality play a central role – a body in art between wakefulness (beyond dreams) and dreams.

Acting: Barbara Ribnikar
Concept and directing: Barbara Novakovič Kolenc
Stage design: Vlatka Ljubanović
Costumography: Lara Kulaš

Production: Muzeum Ljubljana
Co-production: Bunker Ljubljana, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
With financial support of City of Ljubljana

Photo: Tjaša Gnezda

Who is ‘me’ in ‘meme’ in ‘MEMEMEME’?

MEMEMEME is the space of a community’s flow of association, a clash of an infinite number of memes* and their reverberations. Through the performers’ bodies – organic generators and bearers of ideas – as well as digital video and sound references the performance layers gestures, movements, images and expressions. It explores the potentiality of semantic splits and gaps opened up by the fragmented nature of modern communication and questions the social mimetic drive – this almost unstoppable tendency to imitate.
*A meme is any idea that is, despite its potential randomness or nonsense, repeated and multiplied through variation and selection. As a consequence of the near universal use of the internet in the digital age, the most widespread, flexible, resilient, and circulated are precisely (viral) internet memes.

Concept, direction & choreography: Jan Rozman (janrozman.net)
Performers and co-creators: Peter Frankl, Kaja Janjić, Julija Pečnikar, Daniel Petković
Dramaturgy: Varja Hrvatin
Sound and video: Vid Merlak
Costume design: Tanja Pađan (Kiss The Future)
Light design: Urška Vohar
Set design adviser: Dan Pikalo
Graphic design: Matija Medved
Video documentation: Hana Vodeb
Photo documentation: Nada Žgank
Executive producer: Sabina Potočki

Producer: Emanat
Partner: Bunker / Old Power Station, Ljubljana, Mediterranean Dance Center, Svetvinčenat, Croatia
In collaboration with: CoFestival 2019, Ljubljana

***

Jan Rozman (1991) is a freelance dancer, choreographer, improviser, performer, and performance maker, based in Ljubljana and Berlin. His artistic practice engages with extended embodiment, material semiotics, textures, gaps, errors and confusions, ecology, imagination, (science) fiction, and humour as he searches for relevant performative articulations of the post-internet/anthropocene era.
He studied contemporary dance at Arts Secondary School in Ljubljana and choreography at School for New Dance Development (AhK) in Amsterdam. He received his Master’s degree in solo/dance/authorship from Inter-University Centre for Dance (UdK), Berlin. He also graduated in physiotherapy from the Faculty of Health Sciences (UL), Ljubljana. In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award, presented by the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia, as the most “promising choreographer” and was also the recipient of the DanceWeb scholarship at the ImpulseTanz Festival in Vienna.
www.janrozman.net

Who is ‘me’ in ‘meme’ in ‘MEMEMEME’?

MEMEMEME is the space of a community’s flow of association, a clash of an infinite number of memes* and their reverberations. Through the performers’ bodies – organic generators and bearers of ideas – as well as digital video and sound references the performance layers gestures, movements, images and expressions. It explores the potentiality of semantic splits and gaps opened up by the fragmented nature of modern communication and questions the social mimetic drive – this almost unstoppable tendency to imitate.
*A meme is any idea that is, despite its potential randomness or nonsense, repeated and multiplied through variation and selection. As a consequence of the near universal use of the internet in the digital age, the most widespread, flexible, resilient, and circulated are precisely (viral) internet memes.

Concept, direction & choreography: Jan Rozman (janrozman.net)
Performers and co-creators: Peter Frankl, Kaja Janjić, Julija Pečnikar, Daniel Petković
Dramaturgy: Varja Hrvatin
Sound and video: Vid Merlak
Costume design: Tanja Pađan (Kiss The Future)
Light design: Urška Vohar
Set design adviser: Dan Pikalo
Graphic design: Matija Medved
Video documentation: Hana Vodeb
Photo documentation: Nada Žgank
Executive producer: Sabina Potočki

Producer: Emanat
Partner: Bunker / Old Power Station, Ljubljana, Mediterranean Dance Center, Svetvinčenat, Croatia
In collaboration with: CoFestival 2019, Ljubljana

***

Jan Rozman (1991) is a freelance dancer, choreographer, improviser, performer, and performance maker, based in Ljubljana and Berlin. His artistic practice engages with extended embodiment, material semiotics, textures, gaps, errors and confusions, ecology, imagination, (science) fiction, and humour as he searches for relevant performative articulations of the post-internet/anthropocene era.
He studied contemporary dance at Arts Secondary School in Ljubljana and choreography at School for New Dance Development (AhK) in Amsterdam. He received his Master’s degree in solo/dance/authorship from Inter-University Centre for Dance (UdK), Berlin. He also graduated in physiotherapy from the Faculty of Health Sciences (UL), Ljubljana. In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award, presented by the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia, as the most “promising choreographer” and was also the recipient of the DanceWeb scholarship at the ImpulseTanz Festival in Vienna.
www.janrozman.net

The performance is presented in the frame of CoFestival – International festival of Contemporary Dance.

Dark Field Analysis calls upon the intensity of being alive by placing us humans in relation to other forms of life. In the performance, organic blends with synthetic, human with animal and material with ethereal. A long conversation unfolds between two naked men on a carpet; the topic of blood running as a red thread throughout the performance.

Dark Field Analysis draws its name from a branch of alternative medicine that uses dark field microscopy to diagnose systemic bodily conditions originating in the blood. But the conversation between the two men encompasses more than medical facts. Here, blood serves as an analogy for looking inwards and outwards: Into and beyond ourselves.

Choreography and direction:  Jefta van Dinther
Created and performed by: Juan Pablo Cámara and Roger Sala Reyner
Lighting design: Minna Tiikkainen
Scenography: Cristina Nyffeler
Sound design: David Kiers
Songs: Based on the tracks ”The Slow Drug” and ”Horses in my Dreams” by PJ Harvey
Text: Jefta van Dinther, Juan Pablo Camara and Roger Sala Reyner
Assistant choreographer: Thiago Granato
Artistic advice: Gabriel Smeets and Felix Bethge
Technical coordination: Bennert Vancottem
Art Direction: Martin Falck

Photo: Ben Mergelsberg