Wim Vandekeybus and Maria Kolegova Workshop

In cooperation with Ultima Vez & KVS, Cankarjev dom is hosting a free workshop for professional dancers, choreographers and performers to be held on the day of the performance, 14 April, between 10.00 and 13.00 in Duša Počkaj Hall. The workshop will be conducted by Wim Vandekeybus, the founder of the touring dance company, and dancer Maria Kolegova. Vandekeybus' reflection provides the starting point for the workshop: 
“Dancing for me is being guided by a strong inner intuition rather than by technique. Movements are to communicate, with yourself as an honest expression and with others to communicate. Movement is like talking, singing, laughing… As long as it tells something that has to be told as an urge, like an impulse, unstoppable. Therefore, dancing is close to theater. A carrier of inner states which are shared to tell stories.”

The workshop is full. No more places available.

Wim Vandekeybus (1963) 
A choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and photographer. He founded his dance company, Ultima Vez, in the mid-eighties. Vandekeybus has created a language of movement wherein he juxtaposes intuition, impulse and instinct with energy, risk and danger, which exemplifies a dramatic Weltanschauung, full of dynamics and conflict, through the medium of dance. A central focus in his work is the irreconcilable conflict between body and mind, feeling and intellect, man and woman, nature and culture, man and animal, group and individual, illusion and reality. 
Among his most recent pieces, Mockumentary of a Contemporary Saviour (2017) and TrapTown (2018) reveal his disquiet about the current political state of the world. While Traces (2019) focuses on the troubling relation between humanity and nature, his creation Hands do not touch your precious Me (2021) dives back into the ancient Mesopotamian myths. In 2022, for the 35th birthday of Ultima Vez, he made Scattered Memories, with past dancers of the company together with current ones, and with scenes reinterpreted and taken inside out.
In 2020 he has been working with the International Theatre of Amsterdam choreographing Ivo van Hove’s Age of Rage and he has created a new piece with the London-based Rambert Company, Draw From Within, that was awarded the UK National Dance Award for Best Digital Choreography.
Wim Vandekeybus has directed several dance movies, including Blush (2005) and Here After (2007), as well as feature films Monkey Sandwich (2011) and Galloping Mind (2015).

Maria Kolegova
Maria Kolegova began her dancing career at the age of five at a ballet school in Russia. Later, during her studies at the School of Contemporary Dance in Yekaterinburg, she discovered other disciplines, such as jazz, folk dance, martial arts, and yoga. Her first collaboration with Wim Vandekeybus was in 2012 for the revival of What the Body Does Not Remember; it was the first of many of his productions that she would dance in.