Dr. Blaž Lukan
Dance thoughtful of the step before and after

 

EN-KNAP 1993–2007

The dance group EN-KNAP (* EN-KNAP Group since 2007, formally named and pronounced as En–Knap Group since 2023) is a phenomenon in the contemporary dance, theatre and cultural scene in Slovenia and beyond. With over thirty years of operations it represents a constant which has had a far-reaching effect on Slovene and European contemporary dance. An even more important provision of the group’s activities is movement; EN-KNAP is a contemporary dance corpus in constant movement, transformation, ‘in pursuit of happiness’, as one of their performances is called. EN-KNAP is also a group whose institutionalization, while affecting its internal dynamics, has by no means limited its creativity – quite the opposite; what makes it grow and strengthens its quarter-century potency.

Even in the early period of its activities, (1993–2007), we can note a few recognizable and key traits which characterize its work. The initial inspiration for the group is the dancer and choreographer Iztok Kovač. From 1985 he was active as a dancer in various groups and formations and as the author of numerous of his own performances. With his solo How I Caught a Falcon, 1991) he called attention to himself both at home and at guest appearances abroad.

His notable and much-awarded performance How I Caught a Falcon was a turning point in which Kovač condensed many of his formative virtues which are also in effect the foundation dance components the EN-KNAP Group and of European contemporary dance in general: engaging in sports, also in sport climbing, ballroom and Latin dance, jazz ballet, tai chi, and years of travelling around Europe, becoming acquainted with Belgian contemporary dance of 90's, a brief collaboration with the group Rosas, meeting Ksenija Hribar whose work at the Dance Theatre Ljubljana can be seen as the first Europeanization of contemporary Slovene dance, taking part in theatre productions in Slovenia, all strengthened by his characteristic attributes (persistence, discipline, a critical sharpness, humour) and with some even more fundamental volition – a search for (existential, physical, creative) freedom. In his own words, during his solo career up to 1993, Kovač set up the “basic motive principle,” which he “choreographically accentuates” with the group EN-KNAP.

 

What is also paradoxical is the fact that in its constant search for subjective and singular freedom, Kovač’s trademark dance individualism, in order to develop, needs a dance group, a synonym for community and plurality.

 

Kovač comes from Trbovlje, a small mining, industrial town with a distinct and colourful cultural and political history, especially from the Socialist period after the Second World War, an iconography connected to its coalmine and the phenomenology of an introvert society which we encounter again and again in his performances, even more so in EN-KNAP’s dance films and the work of the film director Sašo Podgoršek. Trbovlje is, as was said somewhere, on the one hand a ‘metaphor for hard socialism’ (Eda Čufer), and on the other a ‘metaphysical concept.‘

Rather than addressing politics directly through narrative, the work often approached broader questions of structure, freedom, collectivity and embodiment. “I don’t see dance as an appropriate medium for narrating stories about the current socio-political situation… Here this would be just a waste of time,” Kovač stated at the tenth anniversary of founding the group. Despite this, foreign critics often link Kovač’s dance and the dance or physical vocabulary of EN-KNAP to politics and identify his starting point – especially in setting up the group – as coming from ‘his country’s current traumas’ (Judith Mackrell) in the early 1990s in relation to Slovenia’s independence and even more with the proximity of the Yugoslav wars. Probably more important than Kovač’s origins and his direct response to the closeness of the war in the Balkans, is the encounter between Trbovlje and Europe or the collision of a small and closed (in the opinion of many, totalitarian) social structure with (at least in principle) an open and contextually rich (democratic) Europe. It is not, however, an encounter we should think of as linear; the reticence of origin is an essential condition for a newly-found freedom and European ‘freedom’ is merely a condition for a renewed understanding of ‘reticence.’

Kovač’s thinking is often paradoxical; the group EN-KNAP was founded in Belgium yet it found its domicile in Slovenia; to cast his first ensemble, he organizes international auditions and the original group only included two dancers from Slovenia (Kovač himself and Maja Delak), with the other four picked from the international scene; the first premiere of the newly-established Slovene contemporary dance group takes place in Leuven in Belgium, Spread Your Wings (You Clumsy Elephant) (1993), and the greatest part of their tour takes them to Europe. Despite its broadened field of operation, EN-KNAP constantly strives to strengthen and improve its institutional position in Slovenia but the international successes of the group often have a negative impact on its reception at home. What is also paradoxical is the fact that in its constant search for subjective and singular freedom, Kovač’s trademark dance individualism, in order to develop, needs a dance group, a synonym for community and plurality.

With Kovač and the EN-KNAP dancers, surpassing paradoxes is always positive and creative. Interested in the methodology of working with a group, of keeping it going, sustaining it and exploring with it, Kovač as a dancer and the author accepts egalitarian work in a group, but he re-defines himself in his relationship to the group and its dancers, especially defining anew the role of leader or choreographer. The group’s dramaturge of this era, Eda Čufer, notes that “the formation of the group… is not merely a case of selecting the appropriate dancers but especially defining the mode of operation and relationships between individuals who make up the group.” In one of his interviews Kovač explains, “I’m looking for a new relationship between the choreographer and the dancer, or the director and the actor […] I am neither a director, nor a choreographer […] Perhaps a coordinator, as I do not specify the concept in a way a choreographer or a director would.” A coordinator coordinates the individual contributions and at the same time ensures order in the organizational process or performance. For Kovač the function of the choreographer is in fact anachronistic, what is important is cooperating with dancers, and what counts are creative dancers.

 

For Kovač the function of the choreographer is in fact anachronistic, what is important is cooperating with dancers, and what counts are creative dancers.

 

Under Kovač’s direction, the group normally prepares one performance per season and develops original approaches and methods of working on each piece during the process of preparation. He follows three most important premises of contemporary dance: speed, reaction and communication, while the rules are set working with the dancers, without any prior concept. “Together we rehearse rules, which we ourselves define,” says Kovač. In dance he gives priority to sincerity over technique, thought over movement, chance over predetermined concept, improvisation over rules. More importantly, he continuously tests and breaks the rules he has set.

Kovač likes to confront his dancers with new, unpredictable situations. Before work on a dance performance begins, he uses the process of ‘initiation’ to take them on a climbing trip or visit a mine. Particularly in dance films, his dancers perform in aesthetically raw surroundings, specifically in settings which, due to their distinctness, help establish a new, original and recognizable aesthetics. The process of preparing a performance follows two choreographic principles, the dynamic of closed and open parts. It is based on a ‘system of structured chance’ (3Q), often initiated by a throw of dice, and demands precise communication from the dancers and creativity in creating moves. Improvisation plays an important role in the process, but it disappears in the actual performance, yet despite this, it is the relationship between the closed and open dance parts in the performance which preserves a sense of freedom.

In terms of contents the group concentrates on themes “for which movement is the most important or strongest means of expression,” juxtaposing contrasts such as pleasure against pain or rules against fun, but they are not interested in “dance as an expression of dance itself,” conceivably abstract dance, but dance as an expression of everyday life and individual experiences.

The dancer in the EN-KNAP Group is an individualist who considers both their physical body with its limitations and their subjective contribution to the performance. As Eda Čufer explains, their body is therefore doubly utilized, primarily (intuitively and unconsciously) and secondarily (trained and ‘technically’). Bojana Kunst sees it as persisting on the edge, stretched between a series of dualities: discipline and imagination, physical endurance and faltering, gravitation and flotation, chance and freedom, durability and opportunity. It creates movement from “natural, almost elementary impulses,” combines control over actions with spontaneity, emotion with construction and, most of all, is in control of “hard-to-define opposites,” as foreign critics said about the performance Sting and String – First Touch.

 

In dance he gives priority to sincerity over technique, thought over movement, chance over predetermined concept, improvisation over rules.

 

Beside the dancers which Kovač picks through auditions (these represent the “most important part of the process” and as a rule his dancers come from a variety of cultural backgrounds), what is also important for the group is the choice of other members who collaborate with the team. In first place, the composer or musician. In fact the improvising and composing spirit of the group most often grows from the spirit of the music. It is the interchange between dancers and other collaborators, especially the composer and musician, which enables the group to perform their story. John Zorn (Spread Your Wings (You Clumsy Elephant)), Boris Kovač (Sting and String – First Touch), Vinko Globokar (Far from Sleeping Dogs), Uroš Rojko (Emanatio Protei and Perfect Step?) and others are in fact the legitimate co-authors of the performances as they contribute to their profound structure. Kovač is of course aware that the “dance composition cannot be as rhythmically intensive as the musical one,” since in dance the “social factor is too powerful”, even if the music (and musician) in the group’s performances often appear live, as its active protagonists, performers of some new and often very social choreography.

The group also incorporates other media into its visual structure. Film is especially important (in the performances Codes of Cobra, Far from Sleeping Dogs, Emanatio Protei etc.); the stage production HU DIE, for example, gets its inspiration from the life of a 1920s and 30s Chinese film diva, and utilizes a structural principle of montage (live editing of dance scenes). EN-KNAP performances are often multimedia installations adapted to a dance performance. We should particularly mention the active role of the dramaturge (especially Eda Čufer) in the group’s productions, undoubtedly following Kovač’s idea of reintegrating thought into dance – and dance into thought (Jedrt Jež).

The first fifteen years of activities of EN-KNAP can be seen as an intensive yet incomplete curve with a natural continuation that extends into the EN-KNAP Group. Contemporary critics notice a development in the performances of EN-KNAP, from a “literarization of sorts” and theatricality – in, for example, Spread Your Wings (You Clumsy Elephant) – to a “return to the body” (Ženja Leiler) as an intersection between physicality and culture – such as the performance Codes of Cobra. Kovač himself speaks of a passage from the “phenomenon of movement” towards the “phenomenon of structure”; critics have labelled some performances as “overviews” or recaps of past performances (e.g. the performance Perfect Step?) and have also perceived novelties in others (engaging two foreign choreographers, Julyen Hamilton and Denes Debrei, in creating the stage production HU DIE; a new approach to political themes in the stage production S.K.I.N.; working with Korean dancers on Endless). Some dancers from the group (Maja Delak, Andreja Rauch and Mala Kline) also prepare their own performances.

EN-KNAP is the “first Slovene contemporary dance group to have realistically paved its way onto the competitive European dance scene” (Čufer) and has also at the same time domestically “developed modern forms of co-production and literarily changed the way of thinking about a private institution in the performing arts” (Kunst). The struggle for institutionalization, not only of the group but contemporary dance in Slovenia in general, is the last important segment of the activities of EN-KNAP as a group and Kovač personally. Ever since the foundation of the first contemporary dance group in Slovenia, the Dance Theatre Ljubljana (PTL) in 1984, we have been addressing the “eternal troubles of contemporary dance in Slovenia.”

For its first fifteen years, EN-KNAP worked without a permanent stage, merely a space for rehearsals, and was financed – from city and state funds – for each project separately. Problems in carrying out a demanding repertoire (beside rehearsing for performances also engaging outside collaborators, more than two hundred guest performances abroad in 10 years of operations, organizing international workshops, etc.) are inevitable and constant, but also constant is the desire for professionalization which would ensure the continuation of the group’s research work. But if in 1998, a decade before realization, Kovač still spoke with hope of a repertory contemporary dance group with dancers on yearly contracts, only five years later, he contemplated with resignation that contemporary dance in Slovenia was still at the “level of non-institutional centres of production” and as such lacks a suitable social structure and is left to “chance of individual resourcefulness.”

 

In the first fifteen years of its operation EN-KNAP became a constant in the European contemporary dance scene with its continuous movement, moving in (dialectical and paradox) opposites.

 

If in watching Iztok Kovač’s Falcon foreign critics were surprised to find that “new dance is one of the last things anyone connects with Slovenia right now” (Mackrell), a decade later the group EN-KNAP also represents “one of the rare Middle and Eastern European independent dance groups which have successfully survived new forms of mental and economic restrictions that have replaced the former influence of the Iron Curtain,” and is, as such, a real phenomenon. Here we can conclude with what we started with; in the first fifteen years of its operation EN-KNAP became a constant in the European contemporary dance scene with its continuous movement, moving in (dialectical and paradox) opposites. This is the result less of external circumstances and more of its systematic and intentional work, its original and radical “stance on dance”.

 

EN–KNAP 2007–2020

The year 2007 represents a fresh start or first major turning point in the activities of the dance corpus EN-KNAP. I refer here to the establishment of the permanent professional contemporary dance company EN-KNAP Group (EKG). The difference between the two ensembles is not merely in the new name, which retains the link to its origins but emphasises the importance of the group. Specifically, EKG is the first Slovene contemporary dance group as a “public contemporary dance institution of national and international importance,” as the critic Mojca Kumerdej wrote, seeing in its establishment a “symbolic cut into the Slovene dance scene” or an Event with a capital E. In fact, the establishment of the group is a result of the process of structuring Iztok Kovač’s complex dance initiative, with the private institution EN-KNAP Productions and the contemporary dance group EKG as key – but not solely – manifestations of his activities.

For its creator, the purpose of establishing a new group, which represents a logical continuation both of Kovač’s artistic endeavours of more than twenty years as well as the decade-long activities of the dance group EN-KNAP, is no longer in producing individual dance performances but in asserting a model of dynamic production which, in Kovač’s words, is essentially a synergy of his own personal expression with accepting and articulating the expressions of the most notable European approaches to contemporary dance. Kovač sees the advantages of working within such a group in the continuity of working professionally, in placing contemporary dance in the consciousness of audiences, in enhancing public education in the field of dance, and in the potential of motivating and stimulating alternative ways of working both in dance and the entire non-governmental sector.

If, in a status sense, the establishment of EN-KNAP Group means a passage from project-based to programme-based activities (and linked to this a new form of financing), it also brings, in terms of content, a shift from programming for individual projects to planning an entire repertoire. The repertoire principle allowed the group more time to study individual performances, to work on their post-production, and organize its activities in the longer term, also giving them a chance during this time for suitable critical reflection on its work.

The group’s new format also brings along with it new contents; in other words – the different way the group is organized essentially also affects its very poetics. While with EN-KNAP Iztok Kovač “relinquished” the role of choreographer and defined himself simply as “coordinator” of the creative synergy, he now reinstates the former meaning to the role of choreographer but with two crucial differences; firstly, he becomes the group’s artistic director and only choreographs occasionally, and secondly, he displays a new understanding of the workings of a repertory dance group. Pivotal in the reappraisal of the role of the choreographer is the definition of the choreographer’s “natural role”; a presentation which methodologically follows two of Kovač’s complementary choreographic principles based on coincidence – 3Q and Open Parts – requires “someone to put this coincidence into context and give it a meaning.”

 

While with EN-KNAP Iztok Kovač “relinquished” the role of choreographer and defined himself simply as “coordinator” of the creative synergy, he now reinstates the former meaning to the role of choreographer.

 

The choreographer “returns” to the work of the group practically unnoticed and, more importantly, the group no longer represents his trademark but is sui generis. When we talk of a group, we talk of a collection of individual energies, focusing on collective action. As a team, the group can pay the same attention it gives to the results of their work or their performance to the process itself; what becomes important is its daily work, not just the end product. A permanent cast also allows for a more economical way of operating or conducting business, says Kovač, who even sees the name of the group as a “brand name of national importance” in the field of contemporary dance.

Alongside this, what is also important is the broadened understanding of the function of the dancer who in the manipulation with chance becomes not only the performer but also the choreographer, dramaturge and director of their own performance. Kovač sees the advantages of a group such as EKG in confronting dancers with new, different and unpredictable situations, something that is especially important for their development. The work of the group after the founding of EKG really demonstrates that its dancers are capable of very different artistic expressions. “Under the leadership of a prudent author, EN-KNAP Group developed the capacity to perform a quality piece of contemporary dance and embark upon experimenting with theatrical forms in the name of performance,” the reviewer Mario Županović wrote in 2009. The dancer Katja Login summarized the nature of her own participation in EKG as a search for balance between an institutional structure and contextual openness.

 

As a team, the group can pay the same attention it gives to the results of their work or their performance to the process itself; what becomes important is its daily work, not just the end product.

 

In the time since its foundation, EKG has brought to the Slovene scene a previously unimaginable “dynamic of poetics” (Kovač) in combination with a powerful artistic vision and the solid dance core of the group. In terms of subject matter, with the vast competition in the contemporary dance world, EKG looks for specifically “our own” contents, befitting the times and ideally suited to its dancers. This was further facilitated particularly after the second major turning point in the group’s history – the acquisition of permanent accommodation in which it can work. When it was established, EKG worked without a permanent space for rehearsals and performances, operating in “ascetic conditions.”

In 2009 the company EN-KNAP Productions took on the management of the Španski Borci Cultural Centre which became the central setting for the activities of EN-KNAP Group and a cultural centre in the broadest sense. Only by gaining a roof such as Španski Borci can the vision and purpose of a group such as EKG or the plenitude of the activities of EN-KNAP Productions be fully realized. Beside all its other non-dance activities the Španski Borci Cultural Centre has become the hub of contemporary dance events in Ljubljana, through both its focal productions and its co-productions, organizing guest performances, dance festivals, competitions, improvisational events, professional meetings, educational programmes etc.

 

Only by gaining a roof such as Španski Borci can the vision and purpose of a group such as EKG or the plenitude of the activities of EN-KNAP Productions be fully realized.

 

A review of two decades of the activities of EKG (one and half at Španski Borci) is remarkably diverse. The group still collaborates with Slovene and international “classical” choreographers such as Matjaž Farič, Simone Sandroni, Lenka Flory, Claudia de Serpa Soares, Josef Nadj and others. Dancers, for example, Andreja Rauch, Mala Kline, Luke Thomas Dunne and Ana Štefanec Knez, have also tried themselves out as choreographers or authors of performances. As the group’s artistic director, Kovač invited theatre directors to work with the group, for example, Sebastijan Horvat, Tomi Janežič, Bojan Jablanovec, Ivica Buljan, Matjaž Zupančič or Pavol Liška and Kelly Copper from the group Nature Theater of Oklahoma, as well as the film director Sašo Podgoršek; and also himself prepares at least one show a year with his dancers.

EKG premieres are very diverse in their genre or format, exceeding a strictly contemporary dance framework and approaching critical cultural-artistic production, reaching into other fields. Even the group’s introductory opening show Celebration represents this particular form of performance where dance is only one of the segments of a rich event which reaches into the broader cultural, historical, anthropological, folkloric or biographical contexts. The performance Romeo and Public, staged in the ambient of an abandoned shop, intimately confronts the performers with the viewer, virtually face-to-face, and, principally, grants the viewer an active role. Cut Out is a meta-dance performance which takes up a critical autopoietic self-deliberation, both about contemporary dance and performance. Together with professional dancers, the stage production My Kingdom for a Horse also engages non-professional actors, performers from various backgrounds who adopt Kovač’s method of organizing chance.

The dance events Beware, Dance! and Take a Chance on Dance as well as Ant Ferocious and Hellhound are original educational performances for young audiences, the first also being a unique recap of the work of EN-KNAP and EN-KNAP Group. Two omnibus projects – 10 Min South and 10 Min East – later combined into a single performance called 10 Min, bring together on the stage authors from diverse cultural and artistic milieus (e.g. Dalija Aćin, Jordi Casanovas, Olga Pona, David Zambrano, Snježana Abramović-Milković, Matjaž Berger, Edward Clug, László Hudi and others), thus broadening the field of contemporary dance and bringing it closer to various audiences, whilst at the same time using individual scenes to further deepen its exploration. Presenting themselves as authors in the project CTRLART-DEL are members of the dance ensemble EKG: Gyula Cserepes, Tamás Tuza, Luke Thomas Dunne and Ana Štefanec Knez.

The stage production Theatre combines the creative energy of EKG and the international artistic collective Superamas. International co-productions with centres such as the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (France), the steirischer herbst, Graz (Austria), the Staatstheater Mainz (Germany), the Art Center Vooruit, Ghent (Belgium), the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (Germany), the Szene Salzburg (Austria), the Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna (Austria), the Workshop Foundation, Budapest (Hungary), the Zagreb Dance Company (Croatia), the Bitef Teatar, Belgrade (Serbia), and Slovene co-producers (Cankarjev Dom from Ljubljana; the Slovene National Theatre SNG from Maribor; the Anton Podbevšek Theatre from Novo Mesto; Mini Teater from Ljubljana; Pajek – Spider Expand! from Ljubljana) are still an important form of cooperation for the group.

 

The EN-KNAP Group dancer occupies the dance space with precise, sharp cuts. Through movement they simultaneously subjugate two spaces, their own body and the stage.

 

Pursuit of Happiness is one of internationally resonant EKG productions, prepared in cooperation with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, specifically its leaders Pavol Liška and Kelly Copper. It reveals some so-far undiscovered virtues of members of EKG: character acting (with a Texas accent!), cabaret skills, a sense of humour. A distinctive project was also Set and Reset / Reset and Canard Pékinois / Dark Union, by the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Josef Nadj. In the first part of the stage production, dancers reconstruct Trisha Brown’s legendary piece, and in the second, the choreographer Josef Nadj stages anew his own debut choreography. Both pieces represent a ‘return’ to the 1980s in dance but sharpen the focus on the dancers through a contemporary lens.

Digressing briefly, we should try and define EKG’s dance innovation as it emerged during this period. The EN-KNAP Group dancer occupied the dance space with precise, sharp cuts. Through movement they simultaneously subjugate two spaces, their own body and the stage. Extensions of dance lines interweave with relationships in the world surrounding the stage but do not vitally affect them. The dancer’s movement is no longer a move of survival, but of a logical reproduction of life, a multiplication of its segments within the confines of the stage, registering its collisions, reflections and clashes. The EKG body translates dance into a linear form, a ray with a clear initial point and a blurred conclusion. The dancer uncompromisingly delineates their physicality into the horizontal and vertical planes of the stage volume that they are in fact still constructing through their movement. In this, they are driven by a firm will for persistence and a conviction that the line is finite, the plane flexible, and the space conquerable. 

It became a dance that seemed impossible to stop by any external force, a dance that clearly thinks about both its previous and following step, yet is, between the two, capable of coming off the ground and floating freely in the void.

 

What has been said above brings Iztok Kovač’s vision for dance full circle, but does not bring it to an end. What remains unrealised from his original plans is the aspiration to provide permanent employment for the members of the company, comparable to that of the two Slovenian ballet ensembles (SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana and SNG Opera and Ballet Maribor), to build a 20-member ensemble, and to establish a dance ensemble for young dancers. En–Knap Group is also not yet a public institution dedicated to contemporary dance, which would bring much-needed stability to its operations and enable more systematic long-term planning. On the other hand, complete institutionalisation might also affect the group’s “demonic pace of dance” in other ways, or alter those strengths of its development that have, over the years, become its distinctive hallmark. Although the situation of contemporary dance in Slovenia is still not “like in France and Germany”, as dancer Claudia de Serpa Soares once observed, the work of En–Knap Group and its predecessors has undoubtedly established Slovenian contemporary dance in the consciousness of the domestic cultural public, while at the same time placing it firmly on the world dance map.