Introduction to 21st-century Composition
In collaboration with Inštitut .abeceda

The concert will be preceded by a Q&A with the featured artists at 19.00.

15 +

In Slovenian, without translation.

Cankar is a complex and visually rich puppet portrait of one of Slovenia's greatest writers, Ivan Cankar. The show’s director and visual designer Silvan Omerzu delves deep into Cankar's intellectual world. In using puppets from the director’s various creative periods, Cankar also chronicles the development of Omerzu's poetics and aesthetics.

The performance draws on the extraordinarily prolific oeuvre of Ivan Cankar – vignettes, plays, novels, and letters – and focuses on themes running through his writing: longing, guilt, social inequality, eroticism, faith, and death. Cankar is not only a tribute to the writer Ivan Cankar on the 150th anniversary of his birth, but also a witty, moving, and occasionally dark visual study of an artist whose ideas are still alive and inspiringly relevant today. Blending puppetry, stage adaptation, and atmospheric imagery, the show creates its own theatrical language, embodying Cankar's ideas.

The performance combines various puppetry techniques, while drawing on the power of poetic set design, where automatons, masks, light, and shadows incarnate the landscapes of Ivan Cankar's inner worlds and dreams. The central narrative thread is a selection of letters written by Cankar the puppet in different periods of his life: to his mother, Ana Lušin, Etbin Kristan, and Zofka Kveder. The show’s main dramatic block is Cankar's play Pohujšanje v dolini šentflorjanski (Scandal in the Valley of St Florian), the second act of which is performed entirely with Javanese puppets, while the first and third acts employ the formats of shadow and narrative theatre. Silvan Omerzu is one of Slovenia’s most prominent contemporary puppetry artists, working at the intersection of visual and performing arts. Cankar’s director and visual designer, Silvan Omerzu, is Slovenia's leading puppetry artist, known for his unique authorial vision, precise mise-en-scène, and distinctive visual style. 


SILVAN OMERZU (1955) is a visual and puppetry artist. After graduating from the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana, Omerzu started working at the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. In 1983, he completed his specialization in puppet theatre scenography and puppet design in Prague. After returning to Ljubljana, he developed a signature artistic style applied most manifestly to the productions of the Konj theatre, co-founded with the director Jan Zakonjšek. As a freelance artist, he collaborated with the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, the Maribor Puppet Theatre, the Glej Theatre, Cankarjev dom, and the Mladinsko Theatre, as well as with international partners. His shows toured numerous international festivals in Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, and the United States. Omerzu’s collaborations with the Maribor Puppet Theatre include standout, visually stunning productions: Salto mortale (2012), Zlata ptica (2014), Sanje o zvezdi (2016), Zlatolaska in trije medvedi (2019), Besede iz hiše Karlstein (2017) and Želodkova skrivnost (2022). Omerzu is recipient of various international and Slovenian awards for his achievements in the field of visual arts and theatre, most notably the prestigious Prešeren Fund Award (2006). In 2025, he won the Klemenčič Award for Lifetime Achievement (UNIMA Slovenia).

“Two Men in Underwear”, a tender wrestling match with two winners, explores the tension between our inherent need for vulnerability and the barriers that protect us from it. On the stage, transformed into a quiet arena, the performers pass through subtle lifts, falls and deconstructed movement patterns, where flying limbs rearrange their intertwined bodies – like a moving pile of flesh eager for collision. Their transforming relation seeks to answer the question “Is it more difficult to build a wall or to break it?”, highlighting the thin line between pain and pleasure, love and hate. By drawing our attention to the problematic notions of traditional male gender roles, the piece serves as an invitation to perceive strength not as the absence of vulnerability, but as the courage to embrace it.

Presentations of work in progress:
30 January 2026, NEFCD, Härnösand, Sweden
15 February 2026, Zuhause Arnhem, Arnhem, The Netherlands

Burja Podlesnik (2001) is a dancer and choreographer. After graduating from the contemporary dance grammar school SVŠGUGL (Secondary Preschool Education, Grammar School and Performing Arts Grammar School Ljubljana), she continued her studies in Sweden at the NEFCD program (New Education for Contemporary Dance) and in 2025 graduated with a Bachelor of Dance degree from ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands. Burja was part of IlDance's youth company IlYoung, where she danced the work Self Contained, choreographed by Israel Aloni. She performed the work Addio Unplugged by ICK Amsterdam and worked with choreographers such as Mari Carrasco, Miguel Altunage Verdicie, and Caroline Finn. Burja received the Best Dancer Award at the OPUS 1 International Festival of Young Dance Creators in 2019 for her solo Med borovjem temnim (Among the Dark Pine Trees) and during her bachelor studies delved into choreography with the solo Snippet, group work Leftovers, and the duets In My Room and On the Mat. In critically responding to current reality, Burja seeks to reconfigure the space given to things that have no space and voice things that otherwise remain silent.

Swedish dancer Oscar Magnusson (2001) graduated in dance from ArtEZ University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance degree in the Netherlands. Oscar performed the work Addio Unplugged by ICK Amsterdam and worked with the choreographers Mercedes Pedroche, Faizah Grootens, Jelena Kostić, and Anderson Carvalho. With the choreographer Jasper van Luijk, he worked on the solo Pushing Waves and the group piece Krave. He was a choreographic assistant of the work come in but never come back by the choreographer Dalton Jansen.

Dutch-Turkish dancer Koen Kaya Eye (2002) graduated from Codarts University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance degree. Shortly after, Koen danced with Introdans and Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club. He has performed works by Martha Graham, Mauro Bigonzetti, Andonis Foniadakis, Ed Wubbe, and Adi Schwarz, among others. Koen was a choreographic assistant for "The Breakable Us" by Olivia Court Mesa, created for Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. From 2025 onward, Koen joined Ultima Vez under the direction of Wim Vandekeybus, reviving "What the Body Does Not Remember" in 2026.
 

Duration: 40 minutes

The Japanese term kūkan represents the concept of “space” or “dimension”.

It can be understood as a clearly defined space with sharp outlines that determine its shape and scope. Something that can be occupied, measured, and physically experienced. At the same time, it is also a field that arises between things, bodies, or thoughts, like a boundless void. One understanding of kūkan translates as something that contains, while another defines kūkan as something that opens up. Both views intertwine and coexist. It is precisely this expanded definition that makes kūkan a living, ever-shifting space.

Through mutual support and collaboration, the creators open up theretofore non-existent possibilities for movement. Using an original, self-built prop, they seek to understand how kūkan develops from a merely philosophical concept into a practical test of space. The performance thus consciously accepts limitation as a challenge. On a small block of concrete, a relationship develops in which boundaries become possibilities.

Running time: approx. 1 hour and 5 minutes

DUO DENDROCOPOS – Jan Čibej and Luka Poljanec, percussion: acoustic concert

Programme:
Casey Cangelosi: Plato's Cave
Peter Eötvös: Thunder
Dai Fujikura: Chattering Birds
Louis Andriessen: Woodpecker
Maki Ishii: Fourteen Percussions
Alyssa Weinberg: Table Talk
Matej Bonin: Trash Me Out

DUO DENDROCOPOS brings together two young percussionists Jan Čibej and Luka Poljanec. They were fellow alumni at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana under Prof. Simon Klavžar and at the University of Music and Theatre Munich under Prof. Alexej Gerassimez. The duo was established in 2017, when they took up the challenge of participating in the International Percussion Competition in Luxembourg in the Percussion Duos category (IPCL 2018). In February 2018, by winning both the First Prize and the Jean Gieres Audience Award, the Duo Dendrocopos were the competition’s incontestable laureates.

Programme:
Tr e es, for bass flute and bass clarinet    
Between You and Me for flute, viola and harp                                                                   
...rain's cool finger-tips..., for string trio
Hinnulei, for solo cello       
Almost Silenced, for saxophone quartet                                           
Soj, for flute and clarinet 
...and, after all... for alto saxophone and percussion
Saturniidae for solo clarinet                    
clusters of blooms, for ensemble

Musicians:
Anja Clift, flute
Valentina Štrucelj, clarinet
Jože Kotar, clarinet 
Jan Gričar, saxophone
Igor Mitrović, cello
Marija Maja Rome, viola
Doris Šegula, violin
Urška Rihtaršič harp
Simon Klavžar, percussion
Nejc Grm, accordion
Miha Rogina, saxophone
Luna Vavourakis, saxophone
Maksim Gal, saxophone

After graduating in composition from the Ljubljana Academy of Music (Prof. Dane Škerl), Urška Pompe pursued postgraduate studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest (composition: Emil Petrovics, chamber music: Gulyas Marta, solfeggio: Hegyi Erzsebet) and in Basel, Switzerland (composition, Prof. Roland Moser). Throughout her studies, she attended prestigious international masterclasses led by distinguished mentors, most notably Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, and Pierre Laurent Aimard (piano). She has received several awards and recognitions for her work, including Slovenia’s 2007 Prešeren Fund Award for artistic achievements. Her works have been performed at international festivals. In May 2025, Pompe’s Saturniidae was listed among the recommended works at the 71st International Rostrum of Composers. She is a full professor of music theory at the Ljubljana Academy of Music.

Running time: 50 minutes

Dancer and choreographer Kaja Lin and puppeteer Maja Kunšič meet for the first time in a joint exploration of the theme of memory. They use the stage an intimate space where fragments of personal memories emerge from their bodies and objects—fragile, elusive, yet deeply present. What happens when you try to capture a piece of the past? How quickly do points of remembrance transform into vanishing points? In a blend of movement and animation, the body and the object become equivalent narrative mediums.

The title, Vanishing Points, is borrowed from a collection of poems by Lucija Stupica, who was the original inspiration for dancer and choreographer Kaja Lin and puppet designer Maja Kunšič. In the performance, the creators explore various relationships linked to different memories of significant events in their lives. They draw on memories of the body as well as various objects, while also probing into relationships: dancer – object, puppeteer – object, dancer – puppeteer, woman – woman, relationship – relationship.

The multidisciplinary approach (stage acting, puppetry, poetry, and dance) builds upon the artistic background of both creators. The stage thus becomes an intimate space for the performers’ reminiscences, which emerge through the body and various objects that evoke memories of childhood and of people who are no longer with us. 

The performance seeks to raise profound, existential questions about how memory shapes our identity, our perception of reality, and our self-understanding.

The show’s concepts are based on various philosophical writings. The most significant is Plato's metaphor of memory as a wax tablet, mentioned in his dialogue Theaetetus. As something is perceived and experienced, it leaves an impression in wax, just as an image is imprinted on a soft wax surface.

Predstava nas vodi skozi pokrajino spomina, kjer se osebni drobci prepletajo s poetičnimi podobami, filozofskimi odsevi in neizgovorjenim, ki se osvobaja iz telesa. Točke izginjanja tako postanejo prostor vmesnosti – kraj, kamor se vračamo, čeprav ga ni več na nobenem zemljevidu.

Konkvistakon (The Conquistacon) is a theatre you build when you cannot afford to mourn. It is the dramaturgy of empire disguised as spectacle, a funeral in the guise of a celebration. It is the silence of the conquered transformed into a soundscape. It is an anti-mourning apparatus – a ritual, ideology, and mode of performance that transforms death into raw material, territory, or symbolic capital.

It does not speak on behalf of the dead. It speaks only against the systems that dictate their absence. It does not simulate real tragedies. Instead, it maps the dramaturgy of conquest, domination, and curated historical consciousness as manifested in political aesthetics. It does not exist in the future or in fantasy, but in the cracks of the present — in media releases, in museums, military ceremonies, command centres, art biennials, and theatricalized regimes that distort human grief, erase complicity, and glorify violence as a "necessity."

The conceptual framework of the performance Konkvistakon, based on the play Osvajalec (The Conqueror) by Andrej Hieng, blends ideas of "necropolitics" by Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe with Slovenian dramaturge, editor, and writer Petra Pogorevc’s "theatre of mourning".

Duration: 50 min

Warnings: This production includes theatrical haze, strobe-like lighting effects and occasional bright flashes of light.

In a stage show that combines stand-up, Elon Musk and the psychopolitics of Byung-Chul Han, Jan Rozman, like many other men in crisis, embarks on a journey of self-discovery. In his latest work, Rozman asks himself the question: What is it in me that never makes me feel enough? Will he manage to stop the buzzing he feels in his own body in time, or will the next time he switches on the screen, the unstoppable plunge into the black hole of thinking about the impossibility of (bodily) autonomy begin again?

Jan Rozman’s performance Wetware questions the autonomy of bodies in surveillance capitalism through a choreographic intervention in a stand-up format.

The surveillance devices we have voluntarily opted for – our smart devices – track our every move, voice, glance and touch. The algorithms that power them have become better at fulfilling our supposed desires than we are. But at the same time, they also fulfil our greatest fears. Technology is a total institution that we carry within us. Psychopolitical reward and control systems are reflected in somatic processes in tissues, organs, the body and not least in the artist’s performance.

Introduction to 21st-century Composition
In collaboration with Inštitut .abeceda

The concert will be preceded by a Q&A with the featured artists at 19.00.