VENUS

INFO CREDITS VIDEO GALLERY REVIEWS

Premiere: 20/6/2022, Kino Siska, Ljubljana, SI

VENUS: between captivity and flight is a performance based on Sandro 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 creation of text and the dance material which, each in their own way, offer the possibility of different readings and meanings. The performance juxtaposes the two worlds simultaneously present. The world of dream images constantly interrupts the here and now of the body, inhabiting it, challenging it, and transforming it. The space between is one of boundless creativity, from which a multitude of forms and their variations emerge. They create a visual poem in time, one that poses questions about corporeality and sentience, relationality, the gaze and responsibility, desire as a drive of creation, human participation in ceaseless becoming embodied in nature. The performance’s imagery invites us to contemplate the constant birthing into space and time, creative imagination and the beauty of creation.

‘VENUS: between captivity and flight is a performative reflection on the relationship between image, body and dreams. The performance that refers to the painting of the same name by the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is really a contemplation on how can we, through the images, move beyond the images, into a more direct experience of life, of nature in its constant becoming. The whirlwind of moving images, poetry written from dreams and music unfold several intertwined topics such as the body in its experiencing, the relationship to the other, the gaze and its responsibilities, desire as the driving force of all creation, and how we partake in the ceaseless becoming that nature is.’ (Mala Kline)

2023 AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE FOR VENUS: between captivity and flight , Gibanica 2023 – Slovene Contemporary Dance Platform

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, by multiplying, deconstructing and reassembling the image, thus bringing the world of dream images to the stage.’ Nika Arhar

For a moment, you find the essence in the ‘goddess’s loving gaze… Mala Kline creates aesthetic poetry, through which she blurs the boundaries between the dream and thephysical, between the image and the presence, between the visible and the invisible. Lara Lovric, Mesto žensk: VENERA: med ujetostjo in letenjem | Koridor – križišča umetnosti

… fortunately, this dance is not confined to its own code, but corresponds to different dance, cultural codes, fortunately, it is not satisfied with modern contemplation, but rather analyzes it, the work of dreams is first-class material for analysis, for the deconstruction of self-evidentness… a gesture is always imperceptible, especially when it is triggered in sleep, and without touch, especially when it grows out of a foreign body, it is like an unsuspecting womb from which smoke rises, smoke from the rubbing of tissue with tissue and tissue with the will to live, and in the middle that whish is not… Blaz Lukan Trije stavki plesa | Neodvisni

We are witnessing a subtle and almost mysterious experience of images, which in their lightness and harmony draw a dream world before us. The performance occurs outside of language, yet at the same time it speaks in its own visual expression, it points to a world beyond language, which simultaneously grows from within language itself. In the language of the body and its intermediate state, with which it opens a potentially different world. Ana Lorger_Letenje med telesom in sanjami | Neodvisni

Mala Kline in Venus: between captivity and flight juxtaposes the active and passive principle in creation, starting from the motif of the mythological birth of Venus from sea foam as a consequence of the castration of Uranus, the translation of the active principle into inertia, slowing down, stopping which turns into potential, the possibility of imagination. By projecting Botticelli’s painting on the wall of the stage and in front of him on a mesh canvas, snapshots of her body at rest according to the positions of the details of the painting, overlapping them with snapshots of the body in motion, Mala Kline plays with the perception of the eye, the connection with ideas, established patterns. She is interested in how, at the moment of sharing the performance, to move away from what is given and access the internal mechanisms of imagining, as creative tools. The intervention space shows the recognition of stasis in movement and movement in stasis, which is transferred from stage relations to social conditioning, finding a way to resist the imperative of living that constantly forces us to move, develop, adapt. Ivana Slunjski Matica hrvatska – Vijenac 757 – Materijalnost glasa i statičnost kao kreativni potencijali

The viewer is quickly exposed to a different image of temporality than the one she is used to. It seems that the layering of the canvas and the happening space is reflected in the layering of time, in the parallelism of moments. All the carefully planned choreography coexists. Everything that will happen has already happened and is happening. Now it’s all about combinatorics and permutations.
If you didn’t believe the math teacher in high school, believe it now – math is wonderful. Symmetry, regularity and following a pattern of motion remind us of the apparently random symmetry of everything in nature…
As the dancer proves that this game of coincidences is predicted to the smallest detail, and thus breaks the temporal linearity, the poetic voice in the background also names it – »The reverse order of things that look like confusion but are not«. None of that is confusing. Space is the canvas and the body lays predetermined records on it, draws lines, fulfills what is commanded, narrates.
In fact, inside the abstract, pictorial and atmospheric choreography we are a witness to almost dramatic chapters of a story. From the birth to the fall, almost biblically angelic, and towards the end to something, which reminds us of the creation of the world. As if it had come into being for Venus in the form of a blooming meadow…
Mythic and biblical symbolism, together with the cyclic temporality of the form, in viewer’s experience reaches the superhuman, semi-divine, something more eternal and omnipresent than the linearity of beginning and end. The effect is based on the numinous. In the choreography of Mala Kline, the comfort and safety of control are intertwined with the excitement of playfulness and the new. All that is found between the layers of the tangible and comprehensible, seems spacious and fresh, but accessible. We’re floating, but we’re tethered, so it’s okay. Nika Gradisek RECORDS OF THE BODY IN TIME

“With a line of poetics, creating a gaps for the vague but indicated, which all the time hunts for some concreteness, but also evades it in the mise-en-scène, Mala Kline presents an exciting and touching beauty in a well-thought-out artistic language, which incorporates individual impulses patiently and moderately, and therefore does not slip into sugary pathos or artful plasticity. She approaches choreography with a marked maturity, which is characterized by thoughtfulness, moderation, awareness of the power of individual elements, overcoming the limiting univocality and sensibility for the unlimited associativeness of dance, to create an all-encompassing affective performance event that sensibly captures the ephemerality of human experience.’ Masa Radi Buh, A sensitive and mature choreographic flight

Her moods vary, so the playfulness turns into despair – and then it is canceled by some incoming mysticism. Although some actions are occasionally repeated for no particular reason, the performance has an exceptional atmosphere, typical for this interesting artist. Olga Vujović, Dance is more than movement

Works

VENUS