Venus: Between Captivity And Flight

Première 20. junij 2022, Kino Šiška
The first Slovenian performance

Running time 1 hour. No intermission.

Author, choreographer and performer Mala Kline
Set and costume designer, photographer Petra Veber 
Music Kristjan Krajnčan
Film directors Mala Kline, Hana Vodeb
Camera operators Hana Vodeb, Darko Herič
Video synchonisation and mapping Hana Vodeb
Film editing Hana Vodeb
Lighting designer and technical manager Jaka Šimenc
Translator Katja Kosi
Executive producer Ajda Kline

Co-producers
Center kulture Španski borci, Zavod EN-KNAP, Kino Šiška, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija

VENUS: Between Captivity And Flight is a performance based on Sandro Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus depicting the moment of her emergence from sea foam. The birth of Venus occurs as a cut that distinguishes between heaven and earth, thus creating an in-between, wherein creation occurs continuously. Without a cut, there is no gaze and no creation, only inertia. The performance juxtaposes the two worlds simultaneously present. The world of dream images constantly interrupts the here and now of the body, inhabiting it, challenging it, and transforming it. The space between is one of boundless creativity, from which a multitude of forms and their variations emerge. They create a visual poem in time, one that poses questions about corporeality and sentience, relationality, the gaze and responsibility, desire as a drive of creation, human participation in ceaseless becoming embodied in nature. The performance’s imagery invites us to contemplate the constant birthing into space and time, creative imagination and the beauty of creation.

On the stage, we can see Mala's living and recorded body, or several of them; the projections on the veiled surface create layers of images on a visual level, playing with shadows, (in)visibility, multiplying, disassembling and assembling the image, thus bringing a world of dream images to the stage. Nika Arhar

Mala Kline is a performer, choreographer and writer. Her artistic and theoretical work is embedded in the practice of dreaming. Her extensive oeuvre is based on the Saphire® dreaming techniques, which she uses to open up ingenious spaces of experience and generate semantically fluid contradictory imagery marked by atmospheric intensity. With her works she creates unique worlds weaved through the language of our dreaming. Mala Kline won a series of major Slovenian awards and nominations for her choreographic works, including the Golden Bird Award (2005), Triton Award (2005, 2013), the Ksenija Hribar Award for choreography (2013) and the Ksenija Hribar Award for theory (2021) among others. In 2018, she founded ELIAS 2069 institute – a school, an art residency space, an ecological farm and an outdoor spa, located in a pristine natural resort deep in the wilderness of the southern Slovenia and dedicated to education and creation through dreaming. 

ELIAS 2069 is an institute, a school, an art and research residency space, a stage, a home, a durational art project, but foremost it is a hub for creation of blueprints for the coming world. It supports what is potential in the present on its way towards manifestation. Production and distribution of Mala Kline’s performances are handled by ELIAS 2069. 
elias2069.com