Croatia's Acclaimed PERFORATIONS FESTIVAL Opens Tonight at La MaMa
By: A.A. Cristi Nov. 17, 2017
Croatia's acclaimed Perforations Festival returns to New York November 17 to 26 with a diverse slate of genre-blurring performances by artists from Central and Eastern Europe. The 2017 festival will feature seven productions over ten days including U.S. premieres by Bruno Isakovic? and Mia Zalukar, Via Negativa, Ina Sladic, Magda Stawman-Tuka and Anita Wach, Jasna L. Vinovrški, and Marta Zió?ek. The Great Jones Repertory Company's 2015 work Pylade, directed by Ivica Buljan, will also be presented. Perforations is curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic? and presented by La MaMa with an opening performance at Abrons Arts Center.
Taking place annually in Croatia since 2009, Perforacije (Perforations) is the largest initiative focused on artists from Central and Eastern Europe whose work is created within the independent artistic scene. Recipient of an EFFE Award for its innovative programming, Perforations presents artists working in performance art, dance, and theater whose diverse approaches to art-making blur the borders between these genres. While the works touch upon issues of identity, of a collective past, and personal histories, the primary focus is on the present and future. Perforations Festival NY was first presented at La MaMa in 2011.
"It is always a priviledge to present such an exciting roster of energetic and creative artists to new audiences," says Zvonimir Dobrovic?, founder and curator of Perforations. "These artists have been the driving forces behind the current wave of resistance to neo-conservatism in Eastern Europe and their work has been an oasis of hope for a whole generation."
Tickets for shows at La MaMa are based on a per night ticket price providing audiences with an opportunity to see more than one company each night. Tickets are $25 general/$20 students and seniors. The Great Jones Repertory Company's performance of Pylade is free; reservations required. See calendar page or website for details. For tickets call 212-352-3101 / www.lamama.org.
Tickets Jasna L. Vinovrški at Abrons Arts Center are $20. For tickets call 212-352-3101 / www.abronsartscenter.org
SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES
Jasna L. Vinovrški (Croatia)
Staying Alive (U.S. Premiere)
Friday, November 17, and Saturday, November 18, at 8pm
Abrons Arts Center/Experimental Theater
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)
$20
In Staying Alive, Croatian artist Jasna L. Vinovrški and her collaborators-a book and an electronic tablet-tackle the migration debate. In a humble demonstration of community, the book is passed around for the audience to touch and read while Vinovrški experiments with the iPad's potential for eye contact. Teetering between the heartfelt and the absurd, Staying Alive is a precarious situation-one that gradually becomes a state of emergency.
Jasna L. Vinovrški is a performer, choreographer, and teacher. She grew up in Zagreb and lives in Berlin. In addition to her artistic work she works closely as a dramaturge and choreographic assistant to Clément Layes, with whom she has run the company Public in Private since 2008. In 2012 Vinovrški received her MA at the HZT Berlin, and in 2014 she started her PhD at the Institute of Applied Theater Studies at the Justus-Liebig University in Glessen. In 2014, she co-organized the artists' performance event 3AM, which takes place at the artists' house Flutgraben in Berlin.
Support provided by the Trust for Mutual Understanding
The Great Jones Repertory Company (New York)
Pylade (2015)
Written by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Directed by Ivica Buljan
Sunday, November 19, and Monday, November 20, at 8pm
La MaMa Great Jones
47 Great Jones Street (between Bowery and Lafayette)
Free Admission
The Great Jones Repertory Company (GJRC), the legendary troupe started by La MaMa's late founder Ellen Stewart, director Andrei Serban, and composer Elizabeth Swados, collaborates with Croatian director Ivica Buljan on Pasolini's Pylade. This contemporary reinterpretation of the relationship between Pylades and Orestes from Greek mythology and the Oresteia is a poetic, tragic meditation on democracy, consumerism, and the struggle for real social change. The rhythm and emotion of Pasolini's text, translated into English by Adam Paolozza and Coleen MacPherson, is heightened by the music and movement incorporated into this production by Buljan and GJRC to create a total theater of movement, text, spectacle, and music.
The cast features guest Slovenian actor Marko Mandi? as Pylade with Great Jones Rep company members Mia Yoo, Perry Yung, Chris Wild, Cary Gant, Eugene the Poogene, Maura Donahue, Valois Mickens, John Gutierrez, and Tunde Sho as Orestes.
Pylade had its world premiere at La MaMa in 2015.
Marta Zió?ek (Poland)
Make Yourself (U.S. Premiere)
Wednesday, November 22, at 7pm, and Saturday, November 25, at 9pm
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
Make Yourself, an experience somewhere between gym training, techno party, and corporate mindfulness church, starts with a set of imperatives and a body sculpture. Five performers assume the names High Speed, Coco, Lordi, Glow and Beauty, with Marta Zió?ek (aka Angel Dust) serving as moderator and guide. Described by the artists as "a utopian structure that creates its own style, language, and sexuality-Make Yourself is a kind of 'trip' that transmutes the body into a machine."
Choreographer and performer Marta Zió?ek studied humanities at the University of Warsaw before studying choreography at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Her work focuses on expanding the field of practice in choreography and the study of new forms of expression and embodiment. Zió?ek has participated in workshops and collaborated with such choreographers and theoreticians as Bojana Cveji?, DD Dorvillier, Deborah Hay, Maria La Ribot, Trajal Harrell, Benoit Lachambre, Ann Liv Young, Xavier Le Roy, and Meg Stuart. Zió?ek's work has been presented in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, and the United States.
Via Negativa (Slovenia and Poland)
One Hundred Toasts (U.S. Premiere)
Wednesday, November 22, at 8pm
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
Conceived and devised by Anita Wach and Bojan Jablanovec?of Via Negativa, One Hundred Toasts is a celebration-a farewell toast, so to speak, of the romantic idea of the artist-producer and a welcome to the artist-consumer. The work examines how the artist as an embodiment of "true, authentic, genuine human production" no longer exists and how we are faced with the artist as innovator of consumption, and a maker of various artistic forms of consumption. Performed by Wach, with music by Glenn Miller, Michael Nyman, the Stooges, and Alfred Schnittke.
Via Negativa is a Ljubljana-based international platform for research, development, and production of contemporary performing arts. Founded in 2002, it operates under the artistic direction of theater director Bojan Jablanovec and is focused on devising and exploring different performing strategies, with an emphasis on ethics, performance practices, procedures, and genres. In addition to productions, Via Negativa conducts workshops as the VN Laboratory for Contemporary Performing Arts. Via Negativa has devised numerous projects that have been presented in 24 European countries and in the United States.
Bruno Isakovic? with Mia Zalukar (Croatia)
Suddenly Everywhere (U.S. Premiere)
Friday, November 24, and Saturday, November 25, at 7pm, Sunday, November 26, at 4pm
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
Through movement and encounter of two bodies and their opposite poles, Suddenly Everywhere explores the influences on our (ir)rational decisions and states of being-how we are woven by our histories, experiences, (in)securities, and personal aims for the future. Deconstructing the complicated structure of paths we take and gaps therein, Suddenly Everywhere makes visible that which is seemingly not present. Cocreated and performed by Bruno Isakovi? and Mia Zalukar. Dramaturgy by Katarina Pejovi?. Video design by Dora Durkesac.
Bruno Isakovi? is a performer, choreographer, and teacher based in Zagreb. He graduated with a degree in contemporary dance from the Amsterdam School of the Arts in 2009. From 2011 to 2015 he was a member of Contemporary Dance Studio. Isakovi? has received various awards, including a Jury Award and Best Solo Dance Award at the Solo Dance International Festival in Budapest, and the 2016 Croatian national award for best choreographer for his work Denuded (ensemble version). His solo Denuded (2013) toured around the world and his work Disclosures premiered in New York in 2015. He is artistic director of the annual Sounded Bodies Festival in Zagreb.
Mia Zalukar studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and completed her BA in cultural management in Croatia. She has collaborated with many choreographers, including Marjana Kraja?, Irma Omerzo, and Bruno Isakovi?. She was nominated for a Croatian Theatre Award in 2016 for her performances in Denuded and Disclosures by Bruno Isakovi?. She is a high school art teacher of stage performance, contemporary dance, and rhythmics.
TukaWach/Magda Stawman-Tuka and Anita Wach (Poland)
How the Hares Are Dying | Private Inventory (U.S. Premiere)
Friday, November 24, at 8pm
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
A double bill of ontological insecurity that differs wildly in style, the latest two-hander by Magda Stawman-Tuka and Anita Wach plays with ideas of disappearance in relation to our sense of being. The episodic ritual of Private Inventory, conceived as a choreography of the hidden, is followed by an imaginary Joseph Beuys workshop, the setting for an exploration of self-sacrifice and transformation in How the Hares Are Dying. Together with the audience the performers enter the empty space and will try to fill it with events rooted in very personal sources. The events may seem trivial, frivolous, bizarre, but because they are theirs they are unique.
TukaWach was founded by the core creative team of Magdalena Tuka and Anita Wach, performers from theater and dance respectively. After working together in previous collaborations, the two were inspired to formally unite as a company. From 2013 to 2016 TukaWach was known as Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne after the Joseph Beuys artwork. Through its various fusions of new dramaturgy and multimedia experimentation, the narrative of a TukaWach show is never a linear cause-and-effect system of events but one open to fragmentation and deconstruction. Fiction is employed as a device for the performer-devisors to confront personal material though unfixed strategies.
Ina Sladi? (Croatia)
Penny/Audience (U.S. Premiere)
Saturday, November 25, at 8pm, and Sunday, November 26, at 5pm
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
A two-part conceptual project, Ina Sladi?'s Penny/Audience plays with the ideas of risk and of art that disappears in the moment of the performance. The two works will be presented on separate nights. On November 25, Sladi? will perform Penny in which legendary downtown performance artist Penny Arcade will give her performance instructions via an audio installation that Sladi? will hear for the first time when she steps on stage. In Audience (presented on November 26), the instructions will come from the audience and will be given to the artist right before the show.
Ina Sladi? lives and works in Croatia and Germany. She continuously explores borders of performance art, phenomena of pop culture, social networks, and spectacle-oriented society in her works. Educated as a dancer at Folkwang University of Arts, Sladi? has worked with various choreographers and performance artists including Xavier Le Roy, Marten Spangberg, Isabelle Schad, Johannes Wieland, Mike Kelley, Simone Forti, and Joan Jonas. She has also worked with Marina Abramovic since 2012; including a re-performance of Abramovi?'s work at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Zagreb.
SUPPORT
The New York edition of Perforations is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, Fund for Others, FACE Croatia, Polish Cultural Institute New York, and the Adam Miskiewicz Institute.
CALENDAR
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17
8pm: Jasna L. Vinovrški, Staying Alive | Abrons Arts Center/Experimental Theater
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18
8pm: Jasna L. Vinovrški, Staying Alive | Abrons Arts Center/Experimental Theater
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19
8pm: The Great Jones Repertory Company, Pylade | La MaMa Great Jones
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20
8pm: The Great Jones Repertory Company, Pylade | La MaMa Great Jones
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22
7pm: Marta Zió?ek, Make Yourself | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
8pm: Via Negativa, One Hundred Toasts | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24
7pm: Bruno Isakovi?/Mia Zalukar, Suddenly Everywhere | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
8pm: Tukawach, How the Hares Are Dying and Private Inventory | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25
7pm: Bruno Isakovi?/Mia Zalukar, Suddenly Everywhere | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
8pm: Ina Sladi?, Penny - La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
9pm: Marta Zió?ek, Make Yourself | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26
4pm: Bruno Isakovi?/Mia Zalukar, Suddenly Everywhere | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
5pm: Ina Sladi?, Audience | La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
VENUE INFORMATION
La MaMa/Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
New York, NY 10003
La MaMa Great Jones
47 Great Jones (between Bowery and Lafayette)
New York, NY 10003
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)
New York, NY 10002
ABOUT ZVONIMIR DOBROVIC (CURATOR)
Zvonimir Dobrovic? created the Perforations Festival in 2009, along with a network of organizations and producers from the Balkans region with the goal of initiating and promoting regional cooperation and creating local and international opportunities for young and emerging artists. The new commissions and productions are presented at the annual Perforations Festival that takes place in Zagreb, Rijeka, and Dubrovnik, programming more than 20 new works by artists from Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the founder and program director of the Queer Zagreb festival, which has been taking place in Croatia since 2003. Queer Zagreb has presented more than 150 artists and performing companies from all over the world. Dobrovic? co-founded the Queer New York International Arts Festival with the late André von Ah in 2012. He is often invited to teach and hold workshops about curating, curatorial advocacy, and arts management around the world.
ABOUT LA MAMA
La MaMa is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theater. The organization has a worldwide reputation for producing daring performance works that defy form and transcend barriers of ethnic and cultural identity. Founded in 1961 by award-winning theater pioneer Ellen Stewart, La MaMa has presented more than 5,000 productions by 150,000 artists from more than 70 nations. A recipient of more than 30 Obie Awards and dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, La MaMa has helped launch the careers of countless artists, many of whom have made important contributions to American and international arts milieus.
La MaMa's 56th season highlights artists of different generations, gender identities, and cultural backgrounds, who question social mores and confront stereotypes, corruption, bigotry, racism, and xenophobia in their work. Our stages embrace diversity in every form and present artists that persevere with bold self-expression despite social, economic, and political struggle and the 56th season reflects the urgency of reaffirming human interconnectedness. www.lamama.org
ABOUT ABRONS ARTS CENTER
The Abrons Arts Center is the 2014 Obie Award-winning performing and visual arts program of the Henry Street Settlement. The Abrons supports the creation and presentation of bold multidisciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their practice through residencies, educational programs, and commissions; and serves as an international intersection of cultural engagement for artists and audiences. Each year, the Abrons offers more than 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions, and 25 residencies for emerging and international performing and visual artists. The Abrons also provides New York City public schools with teaching artists, involving more than 3,000 students annually. www.abronsartscenter.org
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