idea & choreography: Mateja Bučar
choreography & dance: Alexander Andriayshkin, Eduard Gabia, Tiago Guedes, Diego Invernizzi, Katja Kosi, Manca Krnel, Sandro Mabellini, Julia Morawietz, Rebecca Murgi, Paolo Ottoboni, Giusy Quattrone, Virpi Pahkinen, Snježana Premuš, Andreja Rauch, Daisuke Sakaki, Tomaž Simatovič, Goran Tatar, Nataša Živkovič
theory & philosophy: Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl
visual concept: Vadim Fiškin
music: Borut Savski
production: DUM – Drustvo Umetnikov / DUM – Association of Artists , co-production:Festival Fabbrica Europa, PTL- Ljubljana
Project is supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia , Cultural Department of the City of Ljubljana

 

The performance Brothers Karamazov, would so be created with 20- choreographers and performing artists from Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Germany, France, Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, who are invited to Ljubljana for 2 weeks in December 2006 and based on the work each of them has already contributed in the course of the auditions, they will further elaborate- their very own choices in the presence of all the others in order to create a »one next to each other« Brother Karamazov« performing event;

“Through contemplation of staging a dance performance on Dostoevsky’s novel Brothers Karamazov I came upon the idea to search for »all brothers Karamazov« that we could find today in the world; This, all to famous novel as well as its many many dramatizations have by now sunken deeply and widely into the culture of today’s world, and especially so in the world of theatre, performance, philosophy….

I could picture Ivans Aljoshas, Mityas, Smrdyakov living everywhere even more so among the performers, choreographers, actors, dancers, theoreticians… ; i could picture them making choices daily in order to create their professional lives, one could say, in the same as the heroes from Dostoevky’s novel create their existences and make choices forming their own identities and ideas as the story of the Karamazov brothers develops;

I decided to look at the very existential core of the novel and correspond to it by looking at the existential reality in the contemporary dance and performing arts today”

Mateja Bucar

In order to find all the »Brothers Karamazovs« in the world today, the specific Karamazov auditions/performances were so far held in Ljubljana, Florence, Moscow and Hong Kong,
In the Auditions, that have functioned as auditions in the same time as they have functioned as performances (in order to also reflect audition itself), we first invited performers, dancers, actors, artists , thinkers and others interested to choose and decide entirely for themselves “the role” ( that being either the role of one of the Brothers Karamazov, or another character or idea from the book) that they would want to take on in the performance and further on present it at the audition in a short argumentation or performance.

The result was many, many brothers Karamazovs ;

By now inviting 20, we intend to ”collect some of the many brothers Karamozovs ” and in this way create an event that would through them focus and reflect on the dilemmas of modern subjectivity:
“Today’s individual is more and more under the pressure to choose his or her identity and take him or herself as an artist who creates out of his or her life a work of art. The performance Brothers Karamazov so questions what happens with the individual who is in some way forced to choose him or herself: how he or she chooses his or her sexual, national, religious identity; how he or she takes on a role of the father, son, brother and/or artist. The performance also puts under scrutiny the role of choice in artistic production. What happens when instead of choreographers deciding about which role a dancer will have in the performance, dancer him or herself is invited to choose the role that he or she wants to represent. Can dance actually give up on the authority of the choreographer and is an audition in which dancers make a choice actually able to work?”

Renata Salecl

 

And looking at brothers Karamazov in this way we also intend to somewhat find the impacts Dostoevsky is continuing to have on the “wild minds and harts” of artists, performers, contemporary dancers and other thinker today ;