En–Knap & Iztok Kovač, Janez Janša

Falcon!

50 min

#en–knap group's repertoire#co-productions

2013

Choreographer Iztok Kovač and a director, theatre theoretician and performer Janez Janša, now in their fifties, return to the cult solo performance by Kovač How I Caught a Falcon from 1991. It is impossible to step into the same flow and they don't try. The original solo is just a frame for their contemporary ideas about art and aging, and a basis for their honest testimony about human limits. The original choreography is a beautiful pretext to celebrate dance and to be on stage again. For the perfectionist Kovač who understands the body as a potent, agile machine, it is not easy. He struggles, through the choreography he confronts himself with the production of his youth, and also with Janša who contradicts him. It is Janša who provokes Kovač to dance again, to question the limiting belief that aging inevitably means the end of the artistic career to a dance artist.

131022 Kako sem ujel Sokola foto miha fras 165

131022 Kako sem ujel Sokola foto miha fras 249

Janez Janša & Iztok Kovač: SOKOL!, Španski borci, 15.10.2013, Trije redi časa: 1993-2013-2023

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The solo performance How I Caught a Falcon (1991) is one of the milestones of Slovenian contemporary dance. This cult performance, in which Kovač danced an extraordinarily poetic choreography charged with beauty and a sublime, magical relationship between body, movement, music, light and space, became an emblem of a new era and a new mode of production. Its poetic language, developed just before the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia, surprised the European dance scene. How I Caught a Falcon is one of the works that enabled Slovenian contemporary dance to enter the European context. After this performance, Kovač founded the En–Knap production organisation and went on to develop his own distinctive choreographic language.

The original work was created more than twenty years ago and today approaches it from a considerable distance—not only in time. Created in collaboration with Janez Janša, Falcon! addresses a different set of questions. Dance is perhaps the art form most directly confronted with ageing. No other artist—painter, writer, director, actor, composer or singer—is normally expected to retire before the age of fifty, while the dancing body often becomes undesired and uncompetitive much earlier.

context

Kovač performed Falcon! at the age of fifty-one; Janša, then forty-nine, helped create not a reconstruction of the original work, but a performance concerned with a different body. Together with invited guests, they ask what drives a contemporary dancer to continue dancing later in life, what such dance can be, how movement changes with age, and what challenges this period of life presents to dance.

Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the premiere of How I Caught a Falcon. Where are these two creators and what does the art scene look like? Iztok Kovač is even at the age of fifty flexible and fast, and Janez Janša is still as playful and surprising as he used to be. There are no tired and disenchanted old men on stage. Their physical fitness is obvious even today. But even more precious is their playful confrontation with their own past, or rather, with their past ideals. Their locomotive-personal dialogue is carried in a sympathetically civil tone; questions pertaining to the past and future are asked carelessly, charmingly provocatively, as if two friends were teasing each other. They juggle with the relativity of their opinions and ideas about why we need the dance art today. They question their qualities as well as their past ambitions. The enchanting but mostly playful scenic storytelling is made dynamic not just by their differing opinions, but also by their different artistic directions and different temperaments.

They both have come to know their own limits as well as the limits of the local art scene. Some of it they have already anticipated from the start, and at the beginning of the nineties they even prophetically named it. Much of what they have discovered later has proven to be inspiring for future creation. And namely with this consciousness, they step again into the old form tailored to the needs of a spontaneous, or maybe even naive young artistic explosion. Experience is dancing hand in hand with youthfulness.

Is the beauty and the agility of human movement, known by our grandfathers gathered around the physical training clubs called Falcon, really irretrievably gone, as the society is still obsessed with the ideas of a potent, healthy and impressive body? Falcon! is a neverending struggle for perfection, for the effort to persist in movement and to never stop moving.

Maja Hriešik, Divadelna Nitra Festival

press

The creative mileages and life paths of Kovač and Janša, along with those of their guests in Falcon!, are fascinating and astounding. They have brought the two authors to a performance that is simply unmissable.... The humor and perceptiveness of Facon! are missing in the performances of young dancers. They may be faster and more agile but lack the patina that can only be formed by endurance, life and creative experience. In Slovenia with a rapidly aging population, Falcon! is a profoundly more relevant and acute performance than those that try to keep the pace with times by referring to the recent (and currently inactive) street protests. Falcon! speaks of a subject matter missing from the current public debates: it discusses aging that does not bring along just retirement-related problems /.../ but also quality, wisdom and humour. No strategy or public tender can encompass what we are able to watch in Falcon!.

Jedrt Jež Furlan, Dnevnik

When Iztok Kovač toured Europe with his solo How I Caught a Falcon, Judith Mackrell of The Independent argued that ’new dance is one of the last things anyone connects with Slovenia right now, and Kovač demans an instant regard by simply coming from where he does’. At that time, the solo was above all a form of artistic emancipation for Kovač...Falcon! opens a new space for ideas, wondering, excitement and artistic pleasure that did not exist before. It seems that this new space welcomes a fruitful encouragement towards interpretation and reflection – today perhaps even more so that at the time of the creation of the original performance.

Jela Krečič, Delo

Iztok’s Falcon!, being aged 50, is elegant in performing its long sliding dance moves, even if slowed down, he is obstinately flexible, current and also highly appealing … The inventive video inserts include statements and opinions of choreographers and dancers Jonathan Burrows, Julyen Hamilton, Mateja Rebolj, and of the philosopher Renata Salecl. … The choreography of the memories and findings of Iztok Kovač and Janez Janša will be tailored slightly differently with each performance …, one could only wish for more than an hour of stage time with this performance.

Daliborka Podboj, Parada Plesa

bio

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.

Janez Janša is a director, performer, author and researcher working in the fields of contemporary performing arts and interdisciplinary artistic practice. He studied sociology and theatre directing at the University of Ljubljana and theatre theory at the University of Antwerp. Over the past three decades, he has created numerous stage works, conceptual projects and interdisciplinary collaborations presented at leading international venues and festivals, including Centre Pompidou (Paris), ICA (London), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (New York), Tanzquartier Wien and ImPulsTanz. As an author and co-author, he has developed projects that critically examine the relationships between art, politics, identity and social systems. Alongside his artistic work, Janša is a prominent writer, editor and educator. He has published extensively on contemporary performing arts and dance theory, edited key publications in the field, and lectured internationally. He was long-time director of Maska Institute and a co-founder of several important Slovenian performing arts initiatives. Since 2021, he has led the master's programme in Spatial Strategies at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin).

credits

Concept, performed by Iztok Kovač, Janez Janša

Guests in videos Jonathan Burrows, Julyen Hamilton, Mateja Rebolj, Renata Salecl

Voice Nada Vodušek

Light design, technical realisation Luka Curk

Costume design Valter Kobal

Music sound recordings from How I Caught a Falcon

Sound design Tomaž Grom

Assistant for movement Tanja Skok

Video statements Jonathan Burrows, Julyen Hamilton, Mateja Rebolj and Renata Salecl Camera: Nina Bučuk, Janez Janša, Carme Renalias, Anna Berger

Video editing Julyen Hamilton, Amin Weber, Omar Ismail

Graphic design Omar Ismail

Text Maja Hriešik

Translations Marija Zidar

Sources Video excerpt from The Immaterial World by Julyen Hamilton (performed in Seattle, USA, 2012) / Personal notes by Iztok Kovač (1991) / Text excerpts from Simon Kardum, “Not Bad, Ico” (Slovenske novice, 16 January 1992); Judith Mackrell, “A Foreign Dream of Liberation” (The Independent, 6 May 1993); and Aldo Milohnić, “Agent slovenskega sna” (Dnevnik, 23 October 1992) / “Venček narodnih II” by Vili Fajdiga, from the album Za fuk pa špila gramofon (Nika Records, 2009). Used with permission.

Special thanks to Jonathan Burrows, Julyen Hamilton, Janez Janša, Hotimir Knific, Anja Planišček, Mateja Rebolj, Renata Salecl, Julija Travančić, Amin Weber, Project Motion Bank, MG+MSUM and Sever & Sever.

Production En–Knap Productions

Co-production Maska Ljubljana

Production En–Knap Productions

Founder and artistic director Iztok Kovač

Executive producer Marjeta Lavrič

En–Knap Group rehearsal director Tanja Skok

Head of public relations Marija Zidar

Head of finance Julija Travančić

Programme coordinator and organiser Katja Gabrijelčič

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