Iztok Kovač is a choreographer and founder of En–Knap. Following the international success of his solo How I Caught a Falcon (1991), he became one of the key figures in the development of Slovenian contemporary dance. He founded En–Knap Group, Slovenia's first permanent contemporary dance ensemble, and serves as artistic director of both En–Knap and the Španski borci Cultural Centre. His works have toured internationally for more than three decades. Additionally, his artistic practice includes six dance films, international pedagogical work, guest choreography and the direction of major national events in Slovenia. During the Covid period, he initiated Stage360, developing dance works in virtual reality.
The performance was inspired by Curzio Malaparte's famous unnerving novel La pelle (The Skin), which takes place in Naples in 1943, as the city is transformed by defeat into an open-air market of duplicity, prostitution and half-interred bodies, all of it overseen by Americans who, in their star-spangled naïveté, never completely understand why they are there. Rather than adapting the novel directly, the performance uses its atmosphere of disorientation and decay as a point of departure for exploring contemporary forms of power, survival and human resilience.