Dance, Theatre, Hip Hop and Discourse at 11th Exodos Festival
The 11th annual Exodos festival of performing arts will feature stars such as Robert Lepage, Forced Entertainment and Lydia Lunch, offering a programme varying from theoretic discourse and workshops to hip hop and breakdance.
The organisers promise this year's festival to offer a more extensive programme than so far due to a higher budget. It will therefore be extended over more than two weeks, running from 5 to 23 May, most of the events at Ljubljana's arts centre Cankarjev dom.
One of the most inventive theatre and film directors of our time, Canadian Robert Lepage will open the festival with "The Busker's Opera", adapted from "The Beggar's Opera" by John Gay. This will also be his first guest appearance in Slovenia.
According to the festival selector, Ursula Cetinski, this "show opera" features songs from Kurt Weill opera in jazz, rock and blues rhythms. Performed by the group Ex Machina, the show was co-produced by Cankarjev dom.
Another highlight, on 14 May will be a performance by all-around artist Lydia Lunch, who will present her latest album "Smoke in the Shadows". The musician, poet, photographer and performer has been present on the New York scene for a decade. She has been featured in Sonic Youth, Birthday Party, Foetus and has also worked with Nick Cave.
Ljubljana audiences will have a new chance to see Mark Tompkins, who is to take them into an intimate world with his dance monologue "Song and Dance". Choreographer Gilles Jobin of Switzerland will put on "Steak House", a dance show in which performers create unusual combinations in a square room crammed with furniture and other objects.
Jobin's Canadian peer Daniel Leveille will show something quite different. "Amour, acide et noix" (Love, Acid and Nuts) is a daring and provocative show in which four nude dancers take to the stage in a searing performance set to a diverse music score that includes Vivaldi, Led Zeppelin and Rammstein. The show will draw the curtain on Exodos on 23 May.
Slovenia's off-theatre production will be represented by the trilogy of director Ivica Buljan of the Ljubljana-based Mini teater: "Schneewittchen After Party", "Medea Material" and "The Day of Murders in the Story of Hamlet".
"Dear Elena Sergeevna" was produced by the Ljubljana-based Skuc Theatre. This piece by Russian playwright Lyudmila Razumovska is one of the rare theatre performances on Slovenia's independent scene, whose primary focus of interest is dance.
The dance part of the festival will be open with "Bad Moves" by acclaimed French hip hop and breakdance group Wanted Posse. In the preface of the last of their two appearances on 16 May, the world youth breakdance champions New Born Crew will challenge All Stars Adults.
The theoretical part of the festival will run under the theme "Art and Freedom", discussing the role of art in contemporary society, its freedom and relations to politics and the economy. It will feature a round-table debate involving domestic artists and four lectures by theoreticians from Belgrade, Frankfurt, Zagreb and Ljubljana.
As part of this section, the festival will also showcase "Looking for a Missing Employee", a show by Lebanese director Rabih Mroue, a six-hour show Quizoola! by Forced Entertainment of the UK, who have prepared 2000 questions to give as many improvised answers; and "Stars High in Amnesia's Sky", a collection of memories of the Communist past by Romanian director Mihai Mihalcea.
Exodos will also provide an opportunity to professional dancers to take part in a workshop by the group Ultima vez and its leader Wim Vandekeybus or try their luck in a D.A.N.C.E. audition.
According to the head of Exodos Natasa Zavolovsek, the budget of the festival is SIT 57m (EUR 237,776), SIT 28m (EUR 116,802) of which is a contrbution by the municipal authorities and the Ministry of Culture, while Cankarjev dom, Exodos and sponsors will provide the rest.
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