SLO | EN
SLO | EN

VENUS

Realisation: 2022

Concept, choreography, text, and performance: Mala Kline
Set design, costume design, photography: Petra Veber
Music: Kristjan Krajnčan
Film direction: Mala Kline, Hana Vodeb
Camera: Hana Vodeb in Darko Herič
Video synchronization and mapping: Hana Vodeb
Film editing: Hana Vodeb
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Jaka Šimenc
Translation: Katja Kosi
Executive producer: Ajda Kline

Production: ELIAS 2069 and Mercedes Klein
Coproduction: Center kulture Španski borci / Zavod EN-KNAP, Kino Šiska and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, Department
of Culture.



Hvala Domen Hajnšek, Vid Martinčič, Katarina Morano, Blaž
Celarec, Gašper Puntar and Matija Zvezdan Puntar Kline.
The performance VENUS: Between Captivity and Flight is based on Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, which depicts the moment of her emergence from the sea foam. The Birth of Venus occurs as a cut that separates heaven and earth, thereby creating an intermediate space in which creation is constantly coming into being. For without a cut, there is neither gaze nor creation. Only inertia.

The painting serves as the starting point for the creation of the text and the dance material, each of which, in its own way, opens up its various possible readings and meanings. The performance simultaneously sets up two worlds that are present at the same time. The world of dreamlike images constantly interrupts the here and now of the body, inhabiting, challenging, and transforming it. This open-ended in-between is a space of boundless creativity, from which a multitude of forms and their variations emerge. From these emerges a visual poem in time that addresses us with questions of the body and experience, of our relationship to the other, of gaze and responsibility, of desire as the driving force of creation, and of our presence in the constant becoming embodied by nature. Theatrical images invite us to contemplate the constant emergence into space and time, creative imagination, and the beauty of the created.

‘VENUS: Between Captivity and Flight’ is a theatrical exploration of the relationship between image, body, and dreams. The performance, whose title refers to the painting of the same name by the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, is an exploration of how, through a sequence of images, we penetrate beyond the image into a more direct experience of life and nature in its constant becoming. The interweaving of images, poetry written from dreams, and music unfolds several intertwined themes such as the affirmation of the body and experience, the relationship to the other, gaze and responsibility, desire as the driving force of creation, and our presence in the constant becoming embodied by nature.’ 

Mala Kline

On stage is Mala’s live and recorded body—or rather, multiple bodies; projections on a veiled surface create layers of images on the visual plane, playing with shadows, (in)visibility, the multiplication, disassembly, and reassembly of the image, thus bringing a world of dreamlike images to the stage.