The performance Venus: Between Captivity and Flight is based on 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 text and the dance material which offer the possibility of different readings. The performance juxtaposes two worlds that are simultaneously present. The space in between is a space of unlimited creativity, from which a multitude of forms and their variations emerge. The theatre imagery thus invites us to contemplate the constant birthing into space and time, creative imagination and the beauty of creation. “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, with multiplying, deconstructing and reassembling the image, thus bringing the world of dreamlike images to the stage” (Nika Arhar).
Choreographer, author and performer: Mala Kline
Music: Kristjan Krajnčan
Set and costume design, photography: Petra Veber
Film directors: Mala Kline, Hana Vodeb
Camera: Hana Vodeb and Darko Herič
Video synchronization, mapping and film editing: Hana Vodeb
Lighting design and technical management: Jaka Šimenc
Sound design: Jure Vlahović
Projections and set design: Matevž Ftičar
Photo: Urška Boljkovac
Producer: ELIAS 2069, Mercedes Klein
Co-production: Španski borci Culture Centre / EN-KNAP Institute, Kino Šiška, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia
Supported by: City of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
Duration of the performance: 47 minutes
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). In 2018, she founded the ELIAS 2069 institute – a school, an art residency space, an ecological farm, and an open‑air spa located in a pristine natural resort deep in the wilderness of the southern Slovenia and dedicated to education and creation through the use of dreaming techniques.