GALLERY OF DEAD WOMEN
Premiere: 11/9/2005, Cankarjev dom
Gallery of Dead Women is a stage installation created through collision with Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine. Driven by desire to reinvent movement language and choreographic strategies Gallery of Dead Women deals with issues of politics, love, loss, terror and death by appropriating Müller’s writing procedures and applying them to choreography and staging with aim to transpose the narration into an abstract form of dance.
Concept and choreography: Maja Delak & Mala Kline
Created and performed by: Maja Delak, Leja Jurišić, Matej Kejžar, Mala Kline, Jelena Rusjan, Milan Tomášik, Irena Tomažin
Dramatugy: Anja Golob
Sound composition: Hanna Preuss
Sound engineer: Felix Andriessens
Songs: The Chweger
Light design: Jaka Šimenc
Light engineer: Zoran Grabarac
Costume design: Vesna Črnelič
Design: Mauricio Ferlin
Photography: Nada Zgank
Executive production: Jana Wilcoxen
PR: Karla Zeleznik
Production: EN-KNAP
Coproduction: Cankarjev dom
Touring: EMANAT
Media sponsors: Fini oglasi, Radio Student
Support: Ministry of Culture RS, the Municipality of Ljubljana – Department for Culture and program EU Culture 2000
Space and sound setting of the performance endlessly destroy the border between the past and the present, here and there, man and the system. This is a staging of the incapacity of a word, language and body, which cannot lie. It will not be forgotten easily. (J.Jez, Mrtvi in njihove zgodbe, Dnevnik)
On the dark setting with a descrete light, in the presence of dark electronic soundscape, five female and two male dancers place themselves into static positions with arms crossed on their chest and so with their bodies disciplined and motionless serving the decorative demand of the view of the other. After that their bodies start to break and fall into a unarticulated chaos of movements and sounds, which in vain tries to discipline itself again and again. (M.Kumerdej, Galerija mrtvih zensk, DELO)
The opposition between the convention and excess is intensified through choreography. The performance is carefully structured performance. Seven dancers with their precise execution of performance stress even more the functioning and the limitations of the human mechanism. (A.Perne, Temna Stran, Polet)
Researchers have shown in the images an eloquent and penetrating result of their creative work, which raises the questions about humanity and communicated in evocative stage language stage. (A. Perne, Prodornost odrskih podob, Finance)
On the choreographic level seven highly skilled dancers develop a precise movement scorefrom the minimal movement in the initial scenes to the chaotic-grotesque. As they do so they touch upon the very limits of the human – ‘Machine’. As in the movement, the cry, the word, and even gasping in ‘Gallery of dead women’ are the result of deep truthfulness and dedication of dancers-actors in their process of research and investigation. Truly, this fact is the most fascinating part of the show. (B.C.Juraga, Neuobicajeno Ziva Vecer U Pulskom Kazalistu, Glas Istre)
The authors of the Galery of Dead Women, Maja Delak in Mala Kline, have with their latest project once again proved themselves to be a creative, interesting and thorough tandem on dance scene. (D.Podboj, Slovenska plesna zacimba Cimet)