SLO | EN
SLO | EN

PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS

Realisation: 2021

Concept and direction: Snježana Premuš
Dancers and co-creators: Anja Bornšek, Ivan Mijačević, Snježana Premuš, Tina Valentan,  Dragana Alfirević, Dejan Srhoj
Music and performance: Boštjan Perovšek
Light design: Špela Škulj
Costumes design: Barbara Kapelj
Video: Maša Nonković
Photo: Marcandrea

Production: Zavod Federacija Ljubljana
The project was developed as part of Creative Crossroads (LLB – Creative Europe) in collaboration with the NDA of Slovenia
Coproduction: Bunker Ljubljana

More about the project >> Physical Manifestations is an exploratory contemporary dance project that the author has been developing with various collaborators since 2012. Using a kinesthetic-dance system (based on the principles of “body-mind centering”), it focuses on the study of choreographic situations, observation, reflection (with various audiences, artists, and experts), and the generating of specific scores and performance formats that best suit each individual segment of the research. Together with her collaborators, she introduces a reflection on corporeality into personal, social, and public spaces.

She juxtaposes the disciplined body with a dynamic body that eludes bodily discipline (coded dance techniques and other patterns) because it perceives, produces, and articulates its motor and sensory processes beyond presupposed bodily codes and forms. She is interested in audience participation, community, and identity, which she always understands as temporally defined, situated, and embodied.

Since 2012, she and her collaborators have been exploring the viewer’s presence in laboratory settings or in various forms of dance performances: from exploring bodily temporality within a classical stage setting (Physical Manifestations, 2015) to situational scores (Poiesis of the Self, 2016), in which viewers collaborate with the performers in the production of bodily experience and dance installations.

In 2018, the author invited a team of experienced artists—Dragana Alfirević, Dejan Srhoj, Tina Valentan, Anja Bornšek, Gregor Zorc, Špela Škulj, and Boštjan Perovšek, to collectively address relevant questions regarding how we perceive the body, perception in today’s hyper-productive world, and open principles of collaboration that extend to the audience—that is, to visitors as active co-creators of the event.

The aspect of the collective in *Vsak zdaj je čas, prostor* (2019) is not shaped by the social or cultural protocols of a conventional theatrical event, but rather by the conditions and propositions within which the viewers’ embodiment can be reset—sensorily or kinesthetically—so that it both closes in and expands (the introduction of simultaneous spaces). It is precisely in this latest project that the audience’s activity is expressed, taking shape together with the entire artistic team.