En–Knap, Andrea Boll

Downriver

30 min

#site-specific

2025

In Downriver, the flowing body of water becomes both stage and choreographic agent, transforming the urban landscape into a site for negotiating bodily limits, collective endurance, and the human relationship to natural forces. As the first dance performance ever conceived and performed within the Ljubljanica River itself, the work reimagines one of Ljubljana's defining landmarks as a living performance environment.

Negotiating the Current

←

→

Accompanied by the audience, the dancers of En–Knap Group embark on a journey upstream, where movement emerges through a continuous oscillation between resistance and surrender, agency and submission. The riverbank unfolds as a shifting performance space, while the current itself dictates rhythms, trajectories, and encounters. Invited to move alongside the performers, spectators become witnesses and participants in a shared experience of effort, adaptation, and interdependence. Downriver explores the body not as a fixed entity but as a porous and relational presence, shaped by its environment and by the collective dynamics of the group. The work premiered at the first edition of Na knap – Festival of Short Dance Form, a platform dedicated to stage, film, VR, and site-specific dance practices.

The environment can sometimes even be dangerous, so dancers must constantly adapt. What we rehearse together is the energy of continuously moving forward. In the river we move backwards, because the current carries us, but the principle is always that you keep moving forward. Their bodies emit an energy that communicates what is happening, and the audience can follow it. What is very valuable, and what I hear from the dancers, is that they began to understand the river—how you adapt to it, how you communicate with it. Even people who walk their dogs there every day notice that. It connects you to the place. And that is precisely why the form of the performance works so well.

Andrea Boll

bio

With over thirty years of experience as a choreographer, performer, dance film director, teacher & mentor, platform organizer and dance facilitator, Andrea Boll (Switzerland) operates at the intersection of dance, film and society. Her work combines artistic precision with embodied research, creating spaces of resonance between movement, image, inner experience, and audiences. She runs a company under the name bollwerk and a dance film festival in Zurich, DANCE ON SCREEN.

credits

Concept and direction Andrea Boll & Melissa Ellberger

Dancers and performers En–Knap Group (Mattia Cason, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Tina Habun, Fiona Macbride, Nika Zidar)

Production En–Knap Productions

Co-production bollwerkproduction

Programme Director (Na knap festival) and En–Knap Productions artistic director Iztok Kovač

Programme assistants Katja Kremenić, Valerija Intihar

Managing director of Španski Borci Cultural Centre and En–Knap Productions Marjeta Lavrič

Executive director of En–Knap Productions / Španski Borci Cultural Centre and head of finance Julija Travančić

En–Knap Group artistic director Mattia Cason

Film & VR Programme co-curation Ágota Harmati (Artistic Director, Moovy Film Festival)

Executive producer Karmen Keržar

Communication and text Valerija Intihar

Design Marko Damiš

Event coordinator and organizer Katja Gabrijelčič

Technical production Aljaž Zaletel, Fabijan Purg, Omar Ismail, Leon Curk, Hotimir Knific, Gal Škrjanec Skaberne, Špela Škulj

Na knap Festival partners moovy – Tanzfilmfestival Köln (DE), PTL – Plesni Teater Ljubljana, Visit Ljubljana

Support: Canton of Zürich Cultural Office, City of Zürich Culture, Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, City of Schlieren, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, Ernst Göhner Foundation, Migros Kulturprozent, Zürich Tanzt, halle.li crowdfunding

The En–Knap Productions and the Španski Borci Cultural Centre (En–Knap Productions as administrator) are supported by the City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.