Butoh double bill: Anamaria Bagarić and Klemen Kovačič

Anamaria Bagarić: Too Much of Me Is Hiding in the World, Too Much of the World Is Hiding in Me.

A contemporary dance performance in which dance, sound and voice meet in different shades. Anamaria Bagarić (author and performer) in collaboration with Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip) and Gašper Selko. The substance and movement of the performance are the result of various techniques – dance, expressive and somatic – inscribed in the body, with the expression and philosophy of Butoh as the main guiding principle.
As the world moves at a speed beyond human capabilities, a counter-pole is needed where the environment can exist (at least for a moment) at his pace, and simultaneously in the world. The show explores and situates the individual in the world through deduction, removing external sensory and social stimuli, and focusing on kinetic ones; it places the body in a space at the intersection of external and internal entropies – as a measure of chaos, it measures entropy. In doing so, it interrogates where in the body the formless mass of information that the body receives accumulates, and in what way it can coexist with all the parallel truths that this mass constitutes but has no influence over. For the present needs time to settle into the body, to accept it and get to know it, but at the same time it cannot eliminate the tensions that arise in collision with the outside world.

Choreographed and performed by: Anamaria Bagarić
Original music, implementation: Gašper Selko (12. 12.), Ida Hiršenfelder (13. 12.)
Poetry: Eva Kokalj, Aljoša Rebrača, Pavla Zabret
Directing advice: Peter Frankl
Costume design: Salvija
Title: Eva Kokalj
Photography: Blaž Plut
Co-production: VITKAR, KUD Oksimoron
Partners: Nataraja Studio, KD Priden možic, Harlekin
Acknowledgements: Urška Centa (NEST), Borut Bučinel, Andreja Kopač, Tina Habun
The performance is supported by the City of Ljubljana and the Municipality of Kamnik.

Klemen Kovačič: Your Songs, Whose Dreams

Your Songs, Whose Dreams is the performer’s confrontation with himself, as he autobiographically examines the relationships that have been essential for him in a personal-formative sense. The layers of ancestry, parents, psychology and upbringing that he uncovers form a concrete form of life – the body. The performance unfolds first and foremost on this very body, the physical manifestation of self-reflection, which is realised through the central principles of Butoh: through psychophysical awareness and commitment to the absolute present, it seeks a path to a state of bare nothingness, to a personal core, a point in ourselves that is free from the past and open to the future. Is it possible to reach our core without tearing apart what has shaped us? The structural performance is made up of individual pieces or songs that act as stops on the way to finding one’s essence. This is the point of a new beginning, of a transformation of the self that allows the dream to be born. But whose?

Conceived and performed by: Klemen Kovačič
Dramaturgy: Nik Žnidaršič
Choreography: Klemen Kovačič and Nik Žnidaršič
Dramaturgical and choreographic advice: Maša Radi Buh
Sound design and original music: Gašper Lovrec
Lighting design: Bor Ravbar
The performance is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.

Photo: Blaž Plut, Željko Stevanić