SONJA PREGRAD (HR): O
O is a project by the Croatian choreographer Sonja Pregrad, artist in residence at the 2016 and 2016 Bazaar Festivals and a prime mover on the Zagreb scene. The work positions plant life as a collective body source of choreographic thought. Performing through movement, voice and imagination, it becomes part of plant communities in which growth, symbiosis, eroticism and extinction intertwine. The performance disrupts the anthropocentric view, opening up space for non-human communities as active co-actors of dance and perception.
Collaborating with a team of performers, Pregrad deals with plant life: how plants pass time, how individual parts of their bodies move, how they flirt with one another, procreate, and die. One participant in the research stated that it is impossible to observe nature and think that we truly see it. The collective understands nature from the playful and “artificial” position of people who are in conflict with nature even as they are part of it. The imagination transforms the plants into drag, forcing the audience to observe them from an up-close and intimate place, as well as from greater distances. Ultimately, everything grows into the imaginary fourth wall of the theatre.
The movements developed in O come from sensory, affective, formal, historical, vocal and poetic places, evoking an energetic geometry of dance that is also a poem about (plant) life.
Performed partially in English.
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Credits
CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Sonja Pregrad
IN COLLABORATION WITH: Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Lana Hosni, Anna Javoran, Nika Pećarina, Eva Priečková
PERFORMERS: Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Lana Hosni, Anna Javoran, Nika Pećarina, Eva Priečková
MUSIC AND SPACE DESIGN: Nika Pećarina
COSTUME DESIGN: Bruna Jakupović
LIGHT DESIGN: Ema Kani
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Tea Kantoci, Morana Kovačević
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Tomislav Maglečić
PHOTOS: Nina Đurđević
FRIEND OF THE PERFORMANCE: Silvia Marchig
PRODUCTION: OBJECT OF DANCE -
Bio
Sonja Pregrad is a Croatian choreographer, performer, educator and curator. She lived for some time in Berlin after completing her MA in Solo Dance at UdK and is now based in Zagreb. She creates solo and ensemble works that have received multiple awards. Recently, she has focused on the topics of drag, plants and poetry. She is the founder and curator of the Improspekcije Festival (since 2007) and the Antisezona collective, which leads the performance art program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. She teaches in the Department of New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Dance Department at the Dramatic Art Academy in Zagreb and at the independent program ROAR Berlin.
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Support
Created as part of Antisezona 23 in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.