Leja Jurišić, Teja Reba: IDEAL

Photo: Petra Veber

One needs to distinguish between intimate, personal-public, and public life.
Goebbels

A lot of work gets done in bed.
Marx

This dance performance for “two performers, a bunch of patriarchal semi-celebrities and a bed” has the suggestive title Ideal as an ironic backside of a serial of human relations that always evolve via a certain inertia – and then again. And again. Self-evidence of available subjects within the reach of a bed hence turns from an everyday pattern into an ultimate “golden rule” governing the variety of lives we live. Like a look into Hitchcock’s bedroom through his own Rear Window. In the Ideal, the authors tackle Goebbels’s division into the intimate, personal-public and public life of the individual which they superimpose upon Marx’s remark that a lot of work gets done horizontally, from a bed, in a bed. The twist from the vertical into the horizontal of witty facility and sarcastic unease which occurs in the pompous demystification of stereotypes, the authors this time pose and transpose even closer to the audience.

Credits

Created and performed by: Leja Jurišić, Teja Reba
Set, light and costume design: Petra Veber
Music: Davor Herceg
Technical director: Igor Remeta
Producer: Žiga Predan
Production: Bunker, Ljubljana 
Co-production: Pekinpah / Kink Kong
The performance is partially created in the frame of the platform Identity.Move! supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture RS and the City of Ljubljana.

Works of Leja Jurišić and Teja Reba have been shown at the Biennale Online Artplus New York, U3 Triennale of Slovenian Contemporary Art, Tanzquartier Wien, Les Subsistances Lyon, the Biennale of Slovenian dance Gibanica, the ]performance space[ London, Student center Zagreb, and at the three major Ljubljana International Arts Festivals: Mladi Levi, City of Women and Exodos. They are recipients of the Ksenija Hribar Award for Promising Choreographers (2013) and the Identity Move! stipend (2014/2015).

Press reviews

The performers investigate, through a bed, the paternalistic relationships that have been bred at room temperature and carefully tended for and out of which we have not yet been able to get, even though we constantly talk about it and strive for more. Reba and Jurišić show that an occassion when someone or something takes us for granted as available subjects is in fact the rule, rather than a coincidence, it is the soundtrack of lives we live. Despite the magnitude of the issue the performative solutions are witty and relaxed –  laughter was often heard in the audience  – while through repetition and escalation the issue is nevertheless kept huge, unpleasant and sharp.
Ana Schnabl, Dnevnik Daily, 15 June 2015

Ideal assaults the patriarchal logic of constructing a woman as a male ideal. … The peformers are re-playing a stereotypical representation of a woman and her work while at the same time subverting it, overthrowing it through a perfect absurdity of the situation.  … While they start the performance with Biblical quotes on love of God and love of thy brother, they end it with a complete deconstruction of speech and enunciation.
Alja Lobnik & Robert Bobnič, Radio Študent, 17 June 2015

Since their internationally acclaimed debut Between Us (2009), Leja Jurišić  and Teja Reba (Ljubljana, Slovenia) have established themselves as a daring artistic tandem working on the crossroads between contemporary dance, performance art and (postdramatic) theatre. Drawing on historical facts, philosophical concepts, (post)feminist critiques and critiques of feminism, political events, social phenomena, cultural predicaments and intimate confessions, the Reba-Jurišić duet is one of the most exciting performance acts at the moment, and, without a doubt, the boldest one that came from Slovenia in a long time. Their performances loosen the borders between leisure and extreme physical states, between content and form, between the personal and the collective, between the rebellious thought and the act of resistance. They tackle hypocrisy and take swings at the established morals. Whether their material takes the form of onstage vomiting, machine-gun breastfeeding, Socratic dialog or hilariously ‘hysterical’ laughter, their personal, artistic, social and political attitude remains persuasive and genuinely fresh.

Performances

Premiere:
13th June 2015 at 8.00 pm, Spider Slang Festival, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana

Up-coming performances:

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Past performances: 
14th June 2015 at 8.00 pm, Spider Slang Festival, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
18th May 2017 at 8.00 pm, Nagib na oder, Narodni dom, Maribor
20th and 21st May 2017 at 8.00 pm, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana
23rd May 2017 at 9.00 pm,  Queer festival, Zagreb Dance Center, Zagreb, Croatia