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 painting is the starting point for the creation of text and the dance material which, each in their own way, offer the possibility of different readings and meanings. 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.
‘VENUS: between captivity and flight is a performative reflection on the relationship between image, body and dreams. The performance that refers to the painting of the same name by the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is really a contemplation on how can we, through the images, move beyond the images, into a more direct experience of life, of nature in its constant becoming. The whirlwind of moving images, poetry written from dreams and music unfold several intertwined topics such as the body in its experiencing, the relationship to the other, the gaze and its responsibilities, desire as the driving force of all creation, and how we partake in the ceaseless becoming that nature is.’ (Mala Kline)
‘For a moment, you find the essence in the goddess’s loving gaze… Mala Kline creates aesthetic poetry, through which she blurs the boundaries between dream and physical, between image and presence, between spirit and nature.’ Lara Lovrič
‘On stage is Mala’s real and virtual body or several of them; the projections onto a veil-like surface on a visual level establish layers of images and play with shadows, (in)visibility, by multiplying, deconstructing and reassembling the image, thus bringing the world of dream images to the stage.’ Nika Arhar
All text in the performance is in English.
Concept, choreography, text in performance: Mala Kline
Set-design, costumes, light-design, photography: Petra Veber
Music: Kristjan Krajnčan
Film direction: Mala Kline, Hana Vodeb
Camera: Hana Vodeb in Darko Herič
Video synhronization and mapping: Hana Vodeb
Film edit: Hana Vodeb
Light-design in technical direction: Jaka Šimenc
Translation: Katja Kosi
Executive production: Ajda Kline
Produkction: ELIAS 2069 in Mercedes Klein
Co–production: Center kulture Španski borci / Zavod EN-KNAP, Kino Šiska and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia
Support Ministry of Culture of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture
Thanks to Domen Hajnšek, Vid Martinčič, Katarina Morano, Blaž Celarec, Gašper Puntar and Matija Zvezdan Puntar Kline.
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.
