Jan Rozman: Thinging

2018

Jan Rozman: Predmetenje / Thinging foto/photo by: Nada Žgank

About

In his new work, choreographer, performer and improviser Jan Rozman confronts things – objects that surround him and the sensations and ideas triggered by them. Thinging is a visceral reaction to the world of things we are living in. It thinks and it sings.

The stage becomes a space of contact for the living and non-living matter; an environment where things can relate, communicate and coexist, perhaps revealing a different side.

The piece works with spaces of being in-between – between objects and subjects, between existence, speculative existence and non-existence, inaction and activity, saturation, calmness and emptiness, light, dusk and darkness, quotidian, mysterious and poetic, as well as between individual present bodies.

The creative process is rooted in a performative research on materiality, started during Jan’s study at Solo/Dance/Authorship master study program at the Inter-University Centre for Dance in Berlin. Conceptually, it leans on the ideas developed by philosophers of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (OOO) and their understanding of things. Considered as a non-instrumental entity, things are enabled to expose their poetic potential and uncover their own choreographic force alongside and in relationship to the performer on stage.

Thinging is challenging anthropocentric thinking by searching for alternative modes of cohabitation of things in a time of threatening global ecological catastrophe and oversaturation with objects in contemporary Western life.

On How to Let ‘It’ Be - Essay by Julia Keren Turbahn >>

You can read more about things and questions of materiality in Jan’s artistic practice from an ecological perspective in an essay Questions of Ecological Artistic Practices: The Living Things, written in March 2017 in the frame of MA SODA at HZT Berlin. There, he dedicated a semester to explore the notions of materiality in theory and practice; that process served as a foundation for the Thinging performance. The essay is available at >>

Video teaser >>
Video trailer >>

Homepage Jan Rozman >>

Technical report >>

Collaborators

Concept and Performance: Jan Rozman
Dramaturgy: Julia Keren Turbahn
Light Design: Urška Vohar
Costume: Kiss the Future
Scenography Advisor: Dan Adlešič
Stage assistance: Dan Pikalo
Graphic Design: Matija Medved
Video Documentation: Gregor Gobec
Photo Documentation: Nada Žgank
Translation and Editing: Urban Belina

Support

Produced by: Emanat
Executive producer: Sabina Potočki
Coproduction: Plesni Teater Ljubljana
Supported by: City of Ljubljana

Biographies of collaborators >>

Reviews

Young choreographer Jan Rozman presented his work at Dance Theatre Ljubljana that was created as a by-product of the research process in the frame of master’s studies in Berlin. He brought back quite a lot of studious, conceptual approach to dance that the local public may be less used to but still managed to show their appreciation and that deals with complex phenomena in a playful and slightly humorous way that is characteristic of Rozman.
Choreographer makes the world of object-ness alive for us in the initial scene with awkward and shy narration of his feelings and moves, while describing the fantastical state of his excited viscera, around the stage, hoarded with various very common objects of different textures, weight, and condition and nudges them by mistake occasionally. Soon words are not needed anymore, these banal objects, such as plastic water container, foil, plastic hose, etc. create the image of stage viscera that starts to speak of its own volition and immerses us with its oscillations. With this tactic Rozman manages not only to make the object at the stage alive which is a common stage strategy, but also shows that the organic body is actually an union of autonomous objectivities that act fully independent of our will.
Rozman directly leads us into the feeling of being removed from the feeling of the known, enabled by our senses – first he turns of the lights for a few long moments and thus switches us off the safe situation and this happens right after he manipulates the hose in such a way we feel as if it got our own will and the tentacles might grab us any minute. (…) And the end, when performer in his mischievous clearing treats audience members as objects, is completely outlandish, and when he opens the curtains, he opens together with the window also our heads to the broad object universe and turns us into small irrelevant things. In the ecosystems, humans are just one of many components and in some we are not even present at all.
We can only hope that foreign lands won’t completely absorb another gifted creator that can think about choreography in a broader way than the formula: dance equates to (human) movement.
Choreography of Objects, Pia Brezavšek, Dnevnik, 26 Oct 2018

Awards

Ksenija Hribar Award 2019 for the promissing choreographer >>

Jury award at the 10th GIBANICA Biennial of Slovenian Contemporary Dance (2021) for performance Thinging

>>
 

Previous events

  1. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  2. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  3. , Improspekcije, Zagreb, HR
  4. , Théâtre de la Ville, Pariz, FR
  5. , Théâtre de la Ville, Pariz, FR
  6. , Théâtre de la Ville, Pariz, FR
  7. , Théâtre de la Ville, Pariz, FR
  8. , Festival Platforma sodobnega plesa
  9. , DOCK 11, Berlin, DE
  10. , Antistatic, Sofia, BG
  11. , O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo, PT
  12. , Gibanica, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, SI
  13. , Stara mestna elektrarna - Elektro Ljubljana, SI in pretok.tv
  14. , Center kulture Španski borci, Ljubljana, SI
  15. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  16. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  17. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  18. , Plesni teater Ljubljana, SI
  19. , Schaubude, Berlin, DE
  20. , Kalejdoskop, Kranj, SI
  21. , Performing Arts Festival, HAU3, Berlin, DE
  22. , Kunsthaus KuLe, Berlin, DE
  23. , Kunsthaus KuLe, Berlin, DE
  24. , GT22, Moment, Maribor, SI
  25. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI
  26. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI
  27. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI
  28. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI
  29. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI
  30. , Plesni Teater Ljubljana, SI

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