Premiere: 13.12.2021 - Nova Pošta
Creators / cast:
Marjeta Kamnikar
Liana Kalčina Srhoj
Djordje Balmazović
DISKOlektiv
Dragana Alfirević
Maja Dekleva Lapajne
Jana Jevtović
Dimitra Alfirević Srhoj
Ajda Tomazin
Artistic coordination and production : Dragana Alfirević
Light design and technical support : Borut Cajnko
Production: Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija in cooperation with Nova pošta (Slovensko mladinsko gledališče and Maska Ljubljana), DUM – Društvo umetnikov as well as studio Moj korak.
Suported by: City of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the European Commission (project Dance On, Pass On, Dream On).
Thanks to: Silva Ros, Jasna Knez, Rok Vevar, Primož Bončina, Sofia Grassi, Lav Kovač, Adam Kinner, Ivan Mijačević
In April 2021, we started to discuss and plan Silver Gold, and in mid-June we started to meet, first in Tivoli Park, then in the studio. We always organised the rehearsals as guided and open meetings, where everyone could suggest a score, but often we also just let the dance emerge from the meeting itself, from the space itself.
On December 13th and 14th, 2021, we held two performances entitled Silver Gold in cooperation with Nova Pošta. Although we were pleased to have completed the first phase of the project with a "tangible" result, we also felt that our work needed different spaces, different organisation of work and different formats for meeting the public. Therefore, we agreed that from January 2022 we would work exclusively in such a way that we do our rehearsals by inviting between one and 15 guests who, if they wish, can get involved in what we create in different ways, so that the boundary between audience and dancers is not always clear and our work draws its inspiration from this fact.
The following letters were used as an artist statement for the exhibition of Djordje Balmazović's drawings at Cofestival 2022.
Thank you for entering an unknown dance project with an open heart and then persevering to the end. Although, as you can see, there is no end. I invited you to participate in the Silver Gold project without really knowing you well. We invited you with one simple desire: to have someone watching our dance rehearsals – we wanted that the gaze would create its own perspective, its own space for the performance of looking as a process, and not (as is usually the case) for the watching to come only at the end of the process, with the arrival of the audience. Your position, by means of your gaze and drawing, has created a special space that is outside and inside at the same time in relation to dance, it is neither outside nor inside. This space has in fact created a world for itself, because the boundary between outside and inside is by no means thin and unambiguous, but rather mutable and multidimensional. Such a gaze is multilayered: it questions, supports, explores, criticizes, enables and approves. By questioning us, it actually gives us support and thus helps us to shed light on what we are doing. It guides us. Offers advice. It assembles the whole from the small parts.
When someone looks at us while we are dancing, we can see ourselves through the eyes of the other. It is important to insist on looking, without being judgemental or glorifying, much less sycophantic. It is important to activate a gaze that will arouse our interest to keep looking. I invited you with the words: “We would like to be watched by someone who knows how to watch,” without any pretence that it will be something else, but unexpectedly you took us on a journey about the question of documenting of dance and the value of “catching the moment” in a whole new way.
Thank you for everything,
Dragana
When you called me, I had no expectations, I didn’t even bother to prepare. I went into it literally, as we say in my language, by the throat into the strawberries (which means, unprepared by choice).
I have always wondered why dancers do particular movements and not others. What is the reason for a particular movement? How is the movement created? What happens in the head that tells the right hand to grab the left side of the head, or the left hand to grab the right hip? Maybe I was also hoping to decipher the “vocabulary of dance movements.”
I brought my sketchbook, a bunch of pencils and brushes to the first rehearsal in Tivoli. We had nice weather. I watched you spread out on the meadow, executing various figures. Some were dance figures, others were everyday, and some were strange. A certain tree was a real magnet – sooner or later, everyone came to it, leaned against it or hugged it. Your movements are gentle and constant – when they start, they don’t stop but pass from one to the other. They seem like a long, unbroken sequence. Like a bird in flight.
I tried to do with a brush what you do with your bodies, to make your bodies, your movements and finally the whole drawing in a single continuous line. I imitated dancing, but on paper. Sometimes you also produced some sounds. Out of your mouth came a slurred aaaaaaaaaaaaa, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii or eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, the voices were mixing with each other, jostling with each other. In the same way that bodies tie themselves in a knot and then untie themselves, voices behave the same way. I tried to record it all, like a chronicler.
After more than a year of rehearsals, I still don’t know if I’m any closer to understanding what dance movements mean. All I know is that for me dance is an abstract art form that relaxes both performers and observers alike. I don’t fully understand it, but I like it. The only thing I really believe is that dance is an expression of unrestrainedness, freedom and even bravery. Just as children, when they are young, are not afraid to draw, sing and dance without worrying about what other people think, dancers have no fear of performing unusual movements.
Thank you for inviting me to take a leap into the unknown.
Djordje
The Fužine Home for the Elderly in Ljubljana has a covered glass atrium on the ground floor, where there are benches and tables, and where most of the residents and visitors come for a drink or a smoke. On one side of the atrium there is a corridor, on the other a café, on the third a dining room and on the fourth an occupational therapy room. From all sides you can observe what is going on in the atrium, where we worked on Silver Gold in November 2023.
It was wonderful to observe Silver Gold as a rippling being, a small community coming into contact with and being guests of another community that has been created and is being created in a different way than the Silver Gold community. Silver Gold as a structure is made in such a way that it builds itself out of listening to the other, to the other community, and makes it clear that it is independent of the activities of the other community and that it is at the same time listening, connecting with the other community.
The atrium of the Fužine Home for the Elderly is ideal for such a meeting of two communities. Residents, staff and visitors could observe the events in the atrium, which were born by Silver Gold: dancing, singing, conversation, pause, music, drawing.
Already at the first meeting, the more curious residents checked and asked what it was all about, as the event was not specifically announced in the home. This was on purpose. We wanted our presence, our action to "speak," to communicate and to avoid formats such as performances, presentations, workshops, because Silver Gold is none of these. Some of the residents also joined in dancing and singing.
Just as Silver Gold at the level of the group/community comes into contact with another group/community mainly by listening to itself and the situation around it, so Silver Gold also at the level of the individual communicates mainly by listening and by wanting that the very presence and work of Silver Gold communicates, invites, explains, suggests. Thus Silver Gold addresses first and most compassionately the level of the human being, and kinesthetically, brings people into coexistence, cooperation, sharing.
On the third of the three meetings, Silver Gold completely spilled over into the café part of the home, where, encouraged by the response and the desire to get even closer to other communities, we entered a new kind of contact with music, where most people went into contact without further explanation, without clarification of who was who. We simply communicated through dance, looking, song, music, words.
Silver Gold bets on the fact that every understanding of dance, of socialising, of dancing is worthy of our attention, and so it is about listening to different understandings in one way or another, and in doing so creating a space where every voice is equally worthy of being listened to.
Later on, there was also a certain turn at a conceptual level in relation to the home visit. Jurij Konjar came to studio Moj korak with Cvetka, his mother, who is currently staying in a home for the elderly in the centre of Ljubljana. We will talk about the generational mirroring in Silver Gold (Dimitra, Dragana, Liana; Marjeta and Gregor; Ajda and Iva) some other time.
A Visit to the Fužine Home for the Elderly in Ljubljana
The Fužine Home for the Elderly in Ljubljana has a covered glass atrium on the ground floor, where there are benches and tables, and where most of the residents and visitors come for a drink or a smoke. On one side of the atrium there is a corridor, on the other a café, on the third a dining room and on the fourth an occupational therapy room. From all sides you can observe what is going on in the atrium, where we worked on Silver Gold in November 2023.
It was wonderful to observe Silver Gold as a rippling being, a small community coming into contact with and being guests of another community that has been created and is being created in a different way than the Silver Gold community. Silver Gold as a structure is made in such a way that it builds itself out of listening to the other, to the other community, and makes it clear that it is independent of the activities of the other community and that it is at the same time listening, connecting with the other community.
The atrium of the Fužine Home for the Elderly is ideal for such a meeting of two communities. Residents, staff and visitors could observe the events in the atrium, which were born by Silver Gold: dancing, singing, conversation, pause, music, drawing.
Already at the first meeting, the more curious residents checked and asked what it was all about, as the event was not specifically announced in the home. This was on purpose. We wanted our presence, our action to "speak," to communicate and to avoid formats such as performances, presentations, workshops, because Silver Gold is none of these. Some of the residents also joined in dancing and singing.
Just as Silver Gold at the level of the group/community comes into contact with another group/community mainly by listening to itself and the situation around it, so Silver Gold also at the level of the individual communicates mainly by listening and by wanting that the very presence and work of Silver Gold communicates, invites, explains, suggests. Thus Silver Gold addresses first and most compassionately the level of the human being, and kinesthetically, brings people into coexistence, cooperation, sharing.
On the third of the three meetings, Silver Gold completely spilled over into the café part of the home, where, encouraged by the response and the desire to get even closer to other communities, we entered a new kind of contact with music, where most people went into contact without further explanation, without clarification of who was who. We simply communicated through dance, looking, song, music, words.
Silver Gold bets on the fact that every understanding of dance, of socialising, of dancing is worthy of our attention, and so it is about listening to different understandings in one way or another, and in doing so creating a space where every voice is equally worthy of being listened to.
Later on, there was also a certain turn at a conceptual level in relation to the home visit. Jurij Konjar came to studio Moj korak with Cvetka, his mother, who is currently staying in a home for the elderly in the centre of Ljubljana. We will talk about the generational mirroring in Silver Gold (Dimitra, Dragana, Liana; Marjeta and Gregor; Ajda and Iva) some other time.
At the invitation of Sanja Tropp Früwald, we visited the Kliker festival in Varaždin, where Sanja very carefully prepared the formats for the meeting between her project Playshop: No Work Just Play and Silver Gold.
After the exchange, as every time, we talked within the Silver Gold team about everything that had happened and we named our thoughts on collaboration, dance dramaturgy, ways of working and performing in dance.