An evening of dance solos II

SLO | EN

AN EVENING OF DANCE SOLOS II

Premiere: 17.12.2025 - Galerija ŠKUC

Concept, choreography, performance: Dejan Srhoj
Design of the first solo: Silvan Omerzu
Music composition: Tomaž Grom
Choreography of the third solo: Leon Marič
Live music: Ana Kravanja
Dramaturgy: Katarina Pejović
Costume design: Dajana Ljubičić
Light design and technical support: Borut Cajnko
Mask making: Silvan Omerzu, Žiga Lebar
Public relations: Urška Comino, Goran Pakozdi
Photography: Nada Žgank

Production: Dejan Srhoj in Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija

The performance was realised with the financial support of: the City of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia

Partners: Društvo Škuc, Maska, Društvo za sodobni ples Slovenije

Thanks to: Nina Meško, Liana Kalčina as well as Dragana, Doroteja and Dimitra

In 2022, Dejan Srhoj created An Evening of Dance Solos, a dance puzzle composed of three collaborations and research processes with artists from different media, poetics, and aesthetics. Three years later, An Evening of Dance Solos II comes before the audience. The form, as well as the paradoxes of collaboration, remain similar, yet in the meantime the world has caught fire and humanity has split apart. At the same time – sometimes at insane speed, other times with unbearable slowness – the deepest plunges into the abyss of monstrosity and the most wondrous quantum leaps are taking place. We are all, at this moment, tightrope walkers balanced on the line between an ending and a new beginning.

Why expand the frame of observation of An Evening of Dance Solos II into such a totality? Because every serious and truthful descent into one’s own heart of darkness – with the intention of seeking its core of light – is a small piece in the mosaic of the common beginning that awaits us. And this is precisely what Dejan, together with his collaborators and co-researchers, is doing.

In the opening solo, he in a way continues where the previous Evening left off: in the search for a new perspective on his own past. As a point of departure, he takes his collaboration with puppet artist Silvan Omerzu on the production Svetnik Krespel, in which he played the title role 22 years ago. This time, he enters into dialogue with the patriarchal and authoritarian principle of the male archetype, yielding to it while simultaneously questioning what points of contact – if any – his own identity has with it.

Composer and double bassist Tomaž Grom created a conceptual sonic framework for Dejan that stems from an anticipated existential necessity and explores the material substance of a decisive moment when life is reduced to just a few objects. What is the sound of each object, and what does the silence in between say?

Together with dancer and choreographer Leon Marič, they dismantle a particular stereotype of male identity and open it up into its specificity – freed from pigeonholing and limitation. At this point, however, a question arises: how simple, and at the same time how demanding, is it to claim one’s freedom and to persist in it?

The entire evening is held and permeated by the beautiful music of multi-instrumentalist Ana Kravanja, which runs parallel to Dejan’s journey – at times they meet, at other times they travel along their own paths. Thus, the movement exploration of different facets of identity is continuously mirrored and echoed in the house of sounds that Ana creates – and vice versa.

Three indescribably short and long years ago, after the first Evening, Dejan wrote the following:
“Everyone reads in dance what they themselves need to read. I am the medium of the visitor’s reading. Why is vulnerability so universal? How can one be vulnerable without being wounded? On stage, to begin with.”

This time, these questions carry weight in a completely different way.

Katarina Pejović