Zuzana Hájková / Štúdio tanca Banská Bystrica: I Haven't Written to You in So Long
Jozef Fruček / Rubia Mia Company: Noah
Goran Sergej Pristaš / BAD co.: Man.Chair
Goran Bogdanovski / Fičo Balet: Švic in Švarc / Sweat and Soot

Zuzana Hájková / Štúdio tanca Banská Bystrica: I Haven't Written to You in So Long

Slovakia

choreography: Zuzana Hájková
dancers: Veronika Koprnová, Zdenka Svíteková, Lenka Vokurková, Tomáš Nepšinský, Juraj Korec
lighting design: Ján Čief
music: Anton Popovič
stage design and costumes: Peter Janků

Through several individual scenes of dance, Zuzana Hájková creates a poetic message on the world of women. These individual chapters from the life of every woman are, at first, read from paper. Men are given the job of quoting from correspondence articulating female thought and feelings, desires and dreams, all working together to show the expanse of the mystery called woman. The individual episodes of life starting with virginity, first contact with love, through the running of the household right up to dreams and memories draw an arc like the acts of a play, finishing in a dance installation - as a nostalgic dreamy blue light floods hundreds of jam jars, and image which becomes an effective metaphor for memory and a kind of ironic pop-art comment on the female life experience at the same time. Even though the choreographer refers to everyday life, her imagination and her ability to make precise points in her situations and movements shut out the banal, offering a completely contemporary version of well-known "stories".
          The performance operates with the magic of simple elegance. The effective set design and lighting elements and Anton Popovič's suggestive original music create a space of beauty and emotional openness.

Štúdio tanca was founded in 1998 in Banská Bystrica under the leadership of dancer and choreographer Zuzana Hájková, who created the company's repertory with pieces like Satto, Forbidden Places, Trois, and Twins Part Two: I Haven't Written to You in So Long. Her vision of the theatrical and sensitivity to scenic composition have led her to cooperation with a many different visual artists, designers, and directors. Especially important is her work with composers, who compose original music for her pieces. Anton Popovič's music for I Haven't Written to You in So Long was nominated in 2001 for best scenic music at the Divadelná Nitra theatre festival.
          Štúdio tanca is one of the top dance theatres in Slovakia. In its repertory are also the works of Milan Kozánek, Marta Poláková or master of dance improvisation, Julyan Hamilton from Great Britain.

Štúdio tanca / Zuzana Hájková, Námestie slobody 3, 974 00 Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, bbdance@pcb.sk, www.studiotanca.sk

Jozef Fruček / Rubia Mia Company: Noah

Slovakia

choreography: Jozef Fruček
dancers: Josef Fruček, Palo Krištofek, Katarína Mojžišová
costumes: Miriam Petráňová

Josef Fruček' s creation is in the turbulent area of experiment somewhere between theatre and dance. The way he has chosen yields the unexpected, as the young choreographer discovers yet another new world in each new work. He seeks out his own language of motion then modifies it, for each piece requires a slightly different language. What's clear is that he always combines his physical and spiritual energy consciously, composing systematically and performing intensively.
          Fruček's schooling was in the theatre, and his skill with text goes beyond the literary. He has the ability to seek out and find meaningful indicators of his themes, as well as a stylistic paradigm, while producing highly original images and situations. He considers the actor's dramatic expression and the dancer's expression in movement as two sides of the same coin, a coin worth the value of a unique theatrical image. His ability to think and orient himself in both these worlds gives his creation its singularity.
          His body, in spite of being capable of refined physical and technical performance, isn't that of a dancer who went through standard training; it has a particular energy and has none of the symptoms typical of dance "technique". He lets energy accumulates nearly to the point of explosion, then suddenly changes tension levels. He is capable of both pathos and comedy, and avoids lyricism. He gradually subdues his actor's background until he arrives spontaneously at dance.
          Noah is the result of long, collective experimental preparation and research the choreographer carried out with his two friends - actor Pavol Krištofek and dancer Katarína Mojžišová, who together make up the Rubia Mia Company.
          Their work is only loosely based on the Biblical story of Noah and the great flood, their goal is not the illustration of the story of Noah or the revelation of a great metaphor in it. The apocalypse, a universal image of the spiritual history of humanity, is examined by the creators as a product of the human imagination, they focus on those places in the human consciousness which are the source of the imagination. They achieve a magical atmosphere in which play, competition, cooperation and risk work together to generate a pattern woven of human experience and its mysteries.

Jozef Fruček (1975) - Slovak actor, choreographer and dancer. He studied acting at the VŠMU arts academy in Bratislava. He is currently engaged in postgraduate research in voice and movement, observing options for the development of interpretation skills. He is basing his research on long-term study of traditional Chinese spiritual and martial arts and study of Chinese medicine. In 1998 he benefited from a half-year course in the Netherlands at the European Dance Development Centre. As an actor he has appeared on Slovak stages, but he mostly devotes his time to choreography and creation-based dance projects. He has co-operated with many European companies and taken part in several international projects. His choreographic debut was in 1996 with the performance Garba, followed by No Enter in 2000. This creation-based solo piece was awarded the Jarmila Jeřábková Prize in the young choreographers' competition. The Noah project began in the same year, thanks to the members of the new Rubia Mia Company. Last year in Belgium he directed another experimental movement theatre project called Hotel Rara.

"Greetings to you all, I am happy that you have all come together because of your surprise about this. It's understandable that it doesn't seem quite right to you. Everybody asks me about it. NOACH is a name for Noah. This form of the name is used in the oldest Slovak bible, which is from the 16th century, and I really liked that. I also like the fact that it will cause people to think about whether it's Noah or someone else, which could in fact be true. I look forward to seeing you in Prague. Jozef"

fruco198@yahoo.com

Goran Sergej Pristaš / BAD co.: Man.Chair

Croatia

director & choreography: Goran Sergej Pristaš
dancers: Nikolina Bujas, Pravdan Devlahović, Damir Bartol Indoš
music: Helge Hinteregger

This dance remake of the 1982 theatre performance of the same name by Damir Bartol Indoš started out as a work-in-progress - a form of musical improvisation seeking to explore a world of movement alternatives to text. This "metatext" generates a search for relationships between objects and the body, between body form and objects: dynamic, spatial and even spiritual connections. Dance and movement become the content in and of themselves, objectifying the feelings they have evoked. This is an investigation serving to renew our elementary knowledge of the connection between worlds inside us and the world outside us. Repetition of movement is used like a mantra, which can open the gates which pulse with the rhythm of the subconscious, yet conversely the repetition is the instrument of change. A paradox, but it makes sense! The use of concentration in order to lose control! A kind of European butoh! Just take in the patterns of dancing bodies, abandon analysis and any philosophical connotations of this pensive piece and connect with the inner world of your own soul.

The BAD co. Theatre Group was founded in 2000 when some of its members worked together on the project Confessions for Theatre &TD. In November 2000, BAD Co. opened Man.Chair, its first independent production. In January 2001 the group premiered their dance project 2tri4 which won Grand prize at the "Tendances" choreographic competition in Luxemburg. 2tri4 will be part of the Aerowaves program in London next year. In August 2001, the group performed a new live art piece Diderot's Nephew or Blood Is Thicker Than Water in co-production with Split Summer Festival, Theatre &TD, and Art Workshop Lazareti in Dubrovnik.

Goran Sergej Pristaš, Mohorovičićeva 5, 10000 Velika Gorica, Croatia, cdu@zamir.net

Goran Bogdanovski / Fičo Balet: Švic in Švarc / Sweat and Soot

Slovenia

choreography: Goran Bogdanovski
dancers: Damjan Mohorko, Dejan Srhoj, Goran Tatar, Goran Bogdanovski
lighting design: Miran Šušteršič
music: Peter Penko
stage design: Irena Pivka
costumes: Alan Hranitelj

Goran Bogdanovski (1971) is an independent choreographer and dancer. His versatile talents and technical knowledge have allowed him to work successfully in many of the different fields of dance - ballet, physical theatre, and contemporary dance. He graduated from the National Ballet School in Ljubljana, going on to study gymnastics, ballet and contemporary dance techniques. From 1989-2000 he was a key member of the ballet company of the National Opera and ballet in Ljubljana. At this time he worked with several leading Slovenian theatre artists and contemporary choreographers including Manjaž Pograjc and the Betontanc Company. He has also worked on a number of film projects. His debut as choreographer in 2000 was the excellent piece 1:0, which contrasted sport and ballet as parts of the male world. This humorous examination of the dance elements in football and the football elements in classical dance received much press at home and abroad and the attention of prestigious European dance and theatre journals. Sweat and Soot is the inaugural work of the new Fičo Balet Company, the members of which had performed in Bogdanovski's 1:0.

Goran Bogdanovski draws from his experience in classic technique in two ways - he liberates his dancers so that they can move freely, while amplifying their technique into self-parody and moving from classical elements into new discoveries. The quartet of dancers in tight tops and skirts are themselves a paradoxical image. This provocative combination of this girls' school look with male bodies bends genders and esthetics. Sequences of classical choreography fall apart into creative chaos, into self-commentary, then mature into a harmonic synchronization of sounds and movements, into an experience that is acoustically heightened. With the use of portable microphones the dancers' amplified bodies are transformed into a kind of comic monster, whose voice and movements speak in a new code of communication - the visuality of sound, the sound of the dancer, and the music of the body.

MASKA Production/ Goran Bogdanovski, Metelkova 6, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia, natasa.zavolovsek@guest.arnes.si, www.maska.si