Katja Legin: NOTHING SPECIAL

A woman jumps.
The body is tense, the foot extended, the arm reaching upward. For a moment, it could be a flight, a fall, ecstasy, a struggle, or some grand allegory of human aspiration.
She is catching a hairdryer.

There was supposedly nothing special about the life of Katja’s grandmother.
Katja’s grandmother did not change the world.
She was born. She lived. She had a family. Some things she chose, others she did not. Some things just happened to her. Surely, she wanted some things to be different. Perhaps some things she did not want different at all.
Then she died.
That could be all.

Nothing Special by Katja Legin searches among household chores, inconveniences, waiting, wrong decisions, small acts of courage, things a person simply has to endure, and those that, despite everything, slip through one’s fingers.
There, she approaches the life of her grandmother and other female figures without trying to rescue them, explain them, or turn them into heroines.
Instead, she lends them her body.
To women who sometimes persisted when they should have left, and gave up when they should have persisted.
In hindsight, almost anything can be interpreted.
Even though imperfect lives cannot be easily summarized.
Situations and figures constantly elude judgment: the funny becomes sad, the banal becomes poetic, and the everyday becomes almost heroic.
Clumsiness can become virtuous. And a banal situation can, for a brief moment, take on the proportions of a historical painting.

Author: Katja Legin
Space design: Branko Hojnik, Jan Rozman
Costumes: Marina Sremac
Sound design: Tomaž Grom
Dramaturgy: Maša Radi Buh
Producer: Eva Prodan
Photo: Guido Mencari
Production: City of Women and Studio for Research on the Art of Play
Partners: Creative Center Krušče, Bunker, Nagib, SNG Nova Gorica
Financial support: City Municipality of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia