Laura Kalauz, Maja Leo, Bojan Djordjev, Christopher Kriese: SAID TO CONTAIN (RS, AR, CH)

Bojan Djordjev was a guest of the 2015 Mladi levi with Not Red, But Blood, a performance of partisan, revolutionary and communist poetry. This year, he is visiting with Laura Kalauz, Maja Leo and Christopher Kriese. As usually for Djordjev, the artistic team is interested in a specific phenomenon, which is not esthetized, but rather deconstructed and exposed to critical thought.

Said to Contain is a contractual term used by shipping companies to record the content of shipping containers, as they are not verifying their contents but instead trust what is written. The artistic team tries to penetrate this membrane of confidence, to pierce the non‑transparent nature of container logistics, the foundation for the organization of our world. In March and April, the team travelled on a container ship from Hamburg to Buenos Aires, and then installed a container in Zurich and staged a performance in and around it. This performance is now coming to Slovenia, a country with a sea port and thus part of global shipping logistics. The artists perceive the container as an anchor around which they create an artistic event, as well as debates and meetings with different local stakeholders.

Authors: Bojan Djordjev, Laura Kalauz, Maja Leo, Christopher Kriese, Lisa Schröter, Miriam Walther Kohn
Local production: Bunker, Ljubljana
Local producer: Alma R. Selimović
Technical director: Andrej Petrovčič
In collaboration with: Nada Especial Tanz, neue Dringlichkeit (nD), TKH-Walking Theory
Co-production: University of the Arts, Theater der Künste (Zurich),
Magacin Cultural Centre (Belgrade), Art Space La Darsena (Buenos Aires)

Foto: Ivan Hrkaš

The performance is in English.

120 minutes

Neja Tomšič: TEA FOR FIVE: OPIUM SHIPS (SI)

August 26 at 10.00 am (in Slovene), at 1.00 and 5.00 pm (in English)
 August 27 at 10.00 am, 1.00 and 3.00 pm (in Slovene)
➤ Sports society Tabor

Neja Tomšič is a visual artist of the younger generation. With her projects and academic research (documentary film in the gallery space), she is also active in the field of film, literature and theater.
Tea for Five: Opium Ships is a “visual essay”; the author combined visual art (painted ceramics) and tea ceremony, creating a micro‑performance in which she takes us for a journey with Opium ships, to the time when only Chinese knew how to grow tea, and only the British knew how to trade it. And since we are sitting, having tea in the present time, a new understanding of today’s post‑colonial world is revealed with every new Opium ship.

Conceptualized, devised and painted by: Neja Tomšič
Ceramics: Anja Slapničar
Produced by: MoTA – Muzeja tranzitornih umetnosti
Thanks to: Zisha – čajna hiša

Reservation is mandatory.

60 minutes

Pablo Fidalgo Lareo: YOU’LL HAVE TO GO TO WAR THAT STARTS TODAY (PT, ES)

Origamis, practically the only prop in the play, are a perfect metaphor for the performance itself, where a whole world emerges from paper, from the book. At the same time, origamis are a perfect illustration of the author, Pablo Fidalgo Lareo, a poet, playwright, director … A man who creates masterpieces from empty paper using only his imagination. A Spanish artist of the younger generation who entered the theatre through literature and is trying not to forget it. During creation of this performance, he felt more of a history researcher.

Every national history has blind spots – painful topics that are not being discussed or there is no agreement about their interpretation. In his performance, Pablo Fidalgo Lareo looks at one of the painful historical periods in Spain – Franco’s fascist regime – through the story of his grandfather’s uncle, who escaped from a fascist prison and fled to Buenos Aires. A play about wars that we are fighting for our own identities, about wars that we are fighting for true stories of history, identity of nations and states.

Written and directed by: Pablo Fidalgo Lareo
Performed by: Cláudio da Silva
Lighting design: José Álvaro Correia
Sound design: Coolgate (aka João Galante)
Production and touring: Amalia Area
Technician: Nuno Figueira
Music: Corrandes d’Exili, Lluis Llach, Alfonsina y el mar, Ane Brun, Mulemba Xangola, Bonga, Marisa Monte, Carlinhos Brown
Piano: Ásia Rosa
Co-produced by: Teatro Municipal Maria Matos, Festival TNT, Festival BAD, Festival de Otono a Primavera
Supported by: Espaço Alkantara, O Espaço do Tempo
Translation to Slovene: Sandra Lebar

Foto: Marta Pina

The performance is in Spanish with Slovene and English surtitles.

80 minutes

Christoph Wachter & Mathias Jud: TOOLS FOR THE NEXT REVOLUTION workshop

The workshop is a journey into possibilities of expression in the communication society and uncovers the narratives and power structures behind it. Participants will create their own Internet independent Wi-Fi communication network, learn how to use it and how to extend the range of Wi-Fi Networks with self-built antennas.

Co-production: Zavod Aksioma, Zavod Bunker
The workshop is related to the exhibition: “…” an archeology of silence in the digital age, presented at the Aksioma Project Space from August 30 until September 29 2017.
The exhibition and workshop are realized in the framework of State Machines – Art, Work, and Identity in an Age of Planetary-Scale Computation project.

Supported by: Evropska unija – program Ustvarjalna Evropa, Ministrstvo RS za kulturo, Mestna občina Ljubljana, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

Information and application (before August 23rd): sonjagrdina@gmail.com

David Weber-Krebs: TONIGHT, LIGHTS OUT! (BE, DE)

David Weber-Krebs is a visual and stage artist, a researcher and a writer. He lives and works In Brussels. In his creative process, he focuses on the relation between a work of art and the audience, therefore creating situations in theatre where the audience is involved in a “complex game between being absorbed by the performance or immersed in the work of art, and maintaining a critical distance.”
David Weber-Krebs begins his performance Tonight Lights Out with two stories: a true story about a campaign by German newspaper Bild, which invited people to turn off lights for five minutes on a certain evening and thus symbolically contribute to a better world; and another story, a legend of a Cairo boy who is persuaded by ghosts, arising from the confusion between Islamic and Coptic beliefs, to turn off lights, which triggers a miracle – a black cloud of pollution over Cairo disappears. Both stories are the basis for the author’s invitation to attempt a joint action – each member of the audience receives a light and a switch, and the experiment can begin. Will we end up in the dark, will we end up anywhere at all, and what follows after we succeed or fail to cooperate?

Concept, text, performance: David Weber-Krebs
Sound: Coordt Linke
Concept of installation: Hans Westendorp
Technician: Martin Kaffarnik
Production and assistance: Marie Urban
Producer: Elisabeth Hirner
Thanks to: Maarten Westra Hoekzema, Mathias Domahidy
Produced by: A Stichting Infinite Endings
Co-prodution: Frascati, STUK, Zeitraumexit, Theater Zeebelt
Translation to Slovene: Ana Radović

Foto: Kasia Chmura-Cegiełkowska

Performance is in English with Slovene surtitles.

100 minutes

Societat Doctor Alonso & Semolina Tomić: ANARCHY (ES)

Societat Doctor Alonso opened one of the Mladi levi festivals as General Electrica. This time, they are coming with a performance by Semolina Tomić, actress, dancer, former drummer in a punk band, and head of the nonprofit Antic Teater in Barcelona. She travelled the world with the theatre group La Fura dels Baus, which also visited Ljubljana. An Osijek native, she has lived in Barcelona since 1985.

Anarchy has had a bad reputation for centuries, even though it does not really mean the absence of order, but only the absence of hierarchy. In her performance, Semolina reminds us of the important 1936 anarchist revolution in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, when all land was effectively and successfully collectivized, as well as of the failed anarchist experiments. Perhaps the performance Anarchy represents a rehearsal for better attempts to undermine the existing order and to establish new relations that are not necessarily based on hierarchy? It is a participatory performance – the audience is greeted by Semolina and 40 plugged‑in electric guitars. Will we establish a new hierarchy together? Can a different hierarchy emerge from anarchy? Or, in Semolina’s words: “If you want silence, you have to reach an agreement.” And: “Do what you will.”

Direction: Sofia Asencio
Playwriting: Tomàs Aragay
Choreography: Sofia Asencio
Creation and interpretation: Semolina Tomić
Lighting and set design: CUBE
Sound space: Alfonso Ferri
Production: Imma Bové
Distribution: Societat Doctor Alonso
Co-production: Festival Terrassa’s TNT, Antic Teatre
In collaboration with: City of Bàscara
With the support of: ICEC, INAEM
Translation to Slovene: Sandra Lebar

Foto: Alessia Bombasí

The performance is in Spanish with Slovene and English surtitles.

60 minutes

Deborah Pearson: HISTORY, HISTORY, HISTORY (UK)

Deborah Pearson is a UK-based and Canadian born artist; writer, performer, and curator with a PhD in narrative in contemporary performance. She is also a member of the collective Forest Fringe which organized the festival of the same name. The diversity of her positions and roles in theatre, and at the same time her commitment to constantly question her position, as well as position of other artists and art in general, gives her an extremely diverse spectrum of approaches to theatre.

History, history, history is a performance about different layers of a certain period: the history of Deborah’s family, the intimate history of the family through the words of three generations of women, the history through a work of art – a film featuring Deborah’s grandfather – and a layer of historical events. On October 23 1956, student demonstrations sparked the Hungarian Revolution, a rebellion against the Communist rule and the Soviet forces, which was led from Corvin Cinema. A performance about the fact that every historical event has its face, and every face has its history.

Author: Deborah Pearson
Dramaturgy: Daniel Kitson
Artistic advisors: Tania El Khoury, Laura Danneqin
The project was developed with the assistance of: National Theatre Studio
Produced by: A House on Fire, Theatre Garonne, BIT Teatergarasjen

Foto: Paul Blakemore

The performance is in English with Slovene subtitles.

90 minutes

20th International festival MLADI LEVI 2017

This year we’re celebrating the 20th edition of the International Festival Mladi levi. When, some twenty years ago, we were considering a new international festival of theatre and dance, we probably didn’t imagine that the festival would ever become this old, and even less that we would stay together as a team for so long. In fact, milestone anniversaries are interesting only insofar as they remind us of the fact that there was once a beginning and that there is continuity. They remind us that we had dreamt about something, and that we have never given up on this dream. What were we dreaming about? We were dreaming about an international festival with contemporaneity at the heart of the action, the driving force of change. About the possibility that we would not have to visit foreign cities to see the shows that are currently trending, but would be able to bring them here. We were dreaming of a festival that foreign artists would love to come to and share their dreams and explorations, and show us how they see and experience the world, both personally and socially.
(more…)

John Kelly: TIME NO LINE (US) – work in progress

John Kelly is a visual artist, director, dancer, and performer – a legend of the New York art scene with a forty-year career and numerous awards. Time no line is a solo performance which has been developing for quite some time and will premiere next spring in New York. It is about the author’s account of himself and of the four decades of his creative career – especially of the tragedy that struck the scene in the form of the AIDS epidemic. Kelly’s performances are often characterized by intimate dealings with major topics. This one is based on the disclosure of the ultimate intimacy – author’s personal journals.

In Houllebecq’s Submission it says that even in our deepest and most lasting friendships, we never speak as honestly as when we are faced with an empty sheet of paper and we are addressing a reader we do not know. During his 40 years of personal journal writing, Kelly has been regularly facing sincerity in front of an empty page, and finally transferred this sincerity to the stage. David Hockney, however, says that AIDS has changed the world. If all those people who died of AIDS were still alive, the world would definitely be a different place, he claims. And maybe Time No Line offers an idea of what the world would be like if it weren’t for premature demise of an entire generation of artists. As a survivor, Kelly can report on these events, on his artistic journey, and on the ways his career has changed the world.

Text, movement, video design, performance: John Kelly
Video design: CultureHub
Movement dramaturgy: Jon Kinzel
Music: Thomas Adès, Charles Aznavour, Hildur Guðnadóttir, George Frideric Handel, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Zoë Keating, Gina Leishman, Joni Mitchell, Henry Purcell, Ken Ueno
Archival Film Sequences: Me O Ye Gods (1992) in/and Painting on Glass (1984), avtor/by Anthony Chase
On video: Hucklefaery
Video technician: Yarie Vazquez
Photos: Steven Menendez, Dona Ann McAdams, Arthur Lambert

The performance has been developed through residencies at: Abrons Arts Center, MASS MoCA, Gibney Dance In Process (DiP) Program, Dixon Place, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana, La MaMa, CultureHub
Touring in Ljubljana: Fiona Templeton, The Relationship
Supported by: Good Works Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, The Persephone Gift
Guest performance made possible by: Trust for Mutual Understanding
Translation to Slovene: Ana Radović

The performance is in English with Slovene surtitles.

45 minutes

Milo Rau/IIPM/CAMPO: FIVE EASY PIECES (CH, BE)

Milo Rau and the cycle of Campo projects, in which established directors create performances for adults with children as performers, have already been guests of the Mladi levi festival: Hate Radio and The Moscow Trials by Milo Rau, Next Day by Phillippe Quesne, and Before Your Very Eyes by Gob Squad. For the political‑documentary‑theatre foundation of his performance Five Easy Pieces (the title alludes to a series of five four‑hands pieces written by Igor Stravinsky as a learning material for his children), Milo Rau, a veteran of documentary and politically engaged theatre who likes to challenge taboos, chose the case of Marc Dutroux, Belgian murderer and child molester.
The performance is moving on a slippery slope of the scandalous case that shook the nation and provoked mass protests; and yet it avoids moralizing, pathos, and simplifying. Milo Rau is not satisfied with showing the monstrosity of Dutroux – he is presented more as a symptom of the political situation, thus also becoming a painful metaphor of Belgium and its colonialism. He is also not satisfied with children as the bearers of truth, innocence, or a better future. Instead, he prefers to explore with them the ontological and existential questions of theatre and life: crime, death, guilt, freedom … The only adult on stage is actually the one who is creating an alienating effect which once again brings out their inner child from the moments when children recreate, in the manner of psychological realism, situations of different aspects of Dutroux’s case. We are watching the performance without tears, and therefore without catharsis – perhaps the sole liberating aspect being that children exist.

Concept, text and direction: Milo Rau
Text and performance: Rachel Dedain, Aimone De Zordo, Fons Dumont, Arno John Keys, Maurice Leerman, Pepijn Loobuyck, Willem Loobuyck, Blanche Ghyssaert, Polly Persyn, Lucia Redondo Peter Seynaeve, Pepijn Siddiki, Elle Liza Tayou, Winne Vanacker, Hendrik Van Doorn & Eva Luna Van Hijfte (2 casts of 8 performers)
Performance film: Sara De Bosschere, Pieter-Jan De Wyngaert, Johan Leysen, Peter Seynaeve, Jan Steen, Ans Van den Eede, Hendrik Van Doorn, Annabelle Van Nieuwenhuyse
Dramaturgy: Stefan Bläske
Direction assistant and performance coach: Peter Seynaeve
Child care and production assistant: Ted Oonk
Research: Mirjam Knapp,  Dries Douibi
Set and costume design: Anton Lukas
Produced by: CAMPO, IIPM
Co-produced by: Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels 2016, Münchner Kammerspiele, La Bâtie – Festival de Genève, Kaserne Basel, Gessnerallee Zürich, Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), SICK! Festival UK, Sophiensaele Berlin & Le phénix scène nationale Valenciennes pôle européen de création
Translation to Slovene: Ajda Šoštarič

Foto: Phile Deprez

The performance is in Flemish with Slovene and English surtitles.

100 minutes