STD – Spending Time Dancing

Spending Time Dancing presents Matej Kejžar’s artistic experimentation with dancing, discharged from the drive for choreography. In order to relieve dance from the burden placed on it by the concept of choreography, the burden of a carefully planned succession of movements as progress, he focuses on the processes that defy the linearity of both movement and time. What happens when Passing Time meets Dancing? What is their relationship? That's when dancing turns into the concept of “wasting time”, and is replaced by the general capitalist postulation that any activity that does not contribute to the concept of productivity as the main and only purpose of every life is not only irreversible, but also wasted. Time that becomes waste. But at the same time, the wasted time becomes a new critical perspective on Western conceptions of progress as an ideal. When we produce, we may not grow, but when we spend our time dancing, we flourish. “Perhaps even more important than possible ultimate solutions is the realization that every time we allow ourselves to liberalize our mental structure, we truly live, truly grow, and truly flourish! Therefore: live, grow, flourish” (Neža Vengust and Matic Ferlan, Odrišča, 18 September 2022).
 

Matej Kejžar (1974) is a graduate of SNDO in Amsterdam and also studied at X-GROUP P.A.R.T.S. and Trisha Brown Dance Company in New York. At the beginning of his career, he created many acclaimed performances. From 2008, has been working with the Rosas Dance Company in Brussels for four years (The Song, Cesena). Since 2011, he has been working between Brussels and Ljubljana, developing a strong oeuvre. Kejžar is the programme manager of international Spider festivals, and a teacher at cultural organizations such as SNDO, SEAD, P.A.R.T.S., TSEH, ImpulsTanz, Ultima vez and Rosas. In addition to Slovenian productions, he regularly creates performances all over the world (India, Singapore, Brazil). He also participated in the French choreographer Boris Charmatz’s project 20 Dancers for the XX Century.

Viktorija Bubalo (1997) is the recipient of the Croatian peer award for perspective dancer (2021). After graduating from the School of Contemporary Dance Ana Maletić, she enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, where she completed the Contemporary Dance Studies course in 2020. In her research, she is interested in the intertwining of the written word, voice and movement, as well as in collaboration with other media such as sound, photography and film. 

Dora Brkarić (1996) graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb and continued her education at UNIARTS in Helsinki (Contemporary Dance), Blank Experimental movie school in Zagreb and SNDO in Amsterdam (Choreography). Solo performances and films at festivals: Monoplay at Ganz New Festival; Life is GREJP at the Garaža Kamba art gallery (Zagreb).

Daniel Petković (1991) is a dancer, actor and performer. Over the years, he collaborated with various collectives, choreographers and directors and performed at many Croatian and international festivals. He focuses on performance, neo-burlesque, contemporary dance, drama, hybrid forms of performing arts, dubbing of cartoons, and moderating.