Leonor Leal, artistic direction, choreography, dance; Alfredo Lagos, guitar; Antonio Moreno, percussion; Manu Menaca, sound design; Carmen Mori, lighting design

A one-act piece, Nocturno does not tell a story, but speaks of impressions, moments and feelings. Such an atmosphere is ideally suited to the character and personality of Leonor Leal. Without cante, without a big story, but a powerful stage presence, a precise and personal dancer who is strong and sensual at the same time. The traces she leaves are as unpredictable and accomplished as those emerging from the extemporaneous rhythms of both musicians. 
 

Mayte Martín, glas; Alejandro Hurtado, José Tomás, kitari

Vsestranska katalonska pevka in kantavtorica Mayte Martín velja za eno najpomembnejših cantaoras (flamenko pevk) svoje generacije. S prefinjenim glasom in glasbeno intuicijo se je povzpela med ikone človeštva. Ob njeni tvorni in elegantni interpretaciji klasičnega flamenko repertoarja in ljudskih pesmi tradicija zasije z novim leskom.
 

Fabula in Theory aims to examine human vulnerability or sensitivity in two theoretical panel discussions. Our perspectives on the individual and society, today’s treatment of vulnerable groups, minorities and their living circumstances, the insignificance and fragility of humans in relation to the all-encompassing system and the amount of vulnerability we can afford ourselves in these times of inhumaneness and societal apathy – are just some of the questions Didier Eribon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will seek to address.

On the second theoretical evening, the forces that keep us trapped in political boxes will be addressed by a French sociologist and philosopher, Didier Eribon (1953), through the issues of social class, sexuality, intellectual community and the complex, often conflicting synthesis of social and psychological identities. The talk will also touch upon a new translation of Eribon’s major work, Returning to Reims (Cf*, 2022), a breath-taking account of one man's return to the town where he grew up after an absence of thirty years and a sociologist's view of inequality and shifting political allegiances in an increasingly divided nation. 

Didier Eribon was professor of sociology in Amiens and visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, at the universities of Harvard and Yale, at New York University (NYU) and at Columbia University. His socio-autobiography Returning to Reims (2009) in which he reveals the break-up of French society attracted international attention. His work Insult and the Making of the Gay Self (1999) has become a classic and a founding document of Queer Studies.  Among his most recent publications are La société comme verdict (2013) and Principes d’une pensée critique (2016).
 

Fabula in Theory aims to examine human vulnerability or sensitivity in two theoretical panel discussions. Our perspectives on the individual and society, today’s treatment of vulnerable groups, minorities and their living circumstances, the insignificance and fragility of humans in relation to the all-encompassing system and the amount of vulnerability we can afford ourselves in these times of inhumaneness and societal apathy – are just some of the questions Didier Eribon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will seek to address.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) will speak about the vulnerability of the individual faced with the loss of human contact and the sense of alienation felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lecture will be followed by a talk devoted to various issues, including diverse stories within different cultures, the construction of human identity, gender and sexuality. These issues commonly feature in the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a prominent feminist and writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction, including Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013), short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) and the essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Her latest books include Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017), Zikora (2020) and Notes on Grief (2021).

Breasts and Eggs, Kawakami’s debut novel, is adored by Western and Eastern critics and readers alike. It paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own. An incisive commentary on being a woman and a mother, the novel blends riveting emotional depth and humour. It is divided into two sections: part one is a reissue of a 2008 novella; part two returns to the same narrator eight years later.

Mieko Kawakami (1976) made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and in 2007 published her first novella that earned her worldwide fame. Known for their experimental and poetic qualities, their insights into the female body, and their preoccupation with ethics and modern society, her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Kawakami’s literary awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. Her best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs was one of TIME’s Best 10 Books of 2020. The famous Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has likened “his favourite new novelist” to “a tree that is always ceaselessly growing and evolving”.

Composer Matej Bonin's latest project builds on the challenges set out in the project Gymnastics of Non/Sense (2014–2016), which questioned the conventional ways of creating a musical composition and sought the hidden potentials of music.

The project combined two media – poetry and music. But not as separate layers, i.e., as text and musical accompaniment, but rather as two interdependent media where the words “grow into” the music and thus “sound” themselves, and the music seeks its identity in the very sound and manifestation of the syllables/words. In the first project, the text was written beforehand and based on Karl Hmeljak’s collection of poems Krčrk (2012), and the stage set was quite static. Gymnastics of Non/Sense II goes a step further. On the one hand, Hmeljak’s text is written specifically for this project and evolves parallel to the sound material, and on the other hand, it is based on the assumption that each concert is really a performance, because at the moment of its public presentation, it becomes subject to that key element (i.e., the listener or the viewer) that connects, with its unpredictability and autonomy, everything around it into potentially coherent ideas. 


The Gymnastics of Non/Sense II will be performed live in Linhart Hall for the first time.

The project was developed in January 2021 in Stara mestna elektrarna (The Old Power Station) as an artistic laboratory produced by the Sploh Institute and the Bunker Institute. 
 

“The Boy Who Grew Too Fast” is a one-act opera for young people with music and libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. The work, written for soloists (adults and children), children's choir and chamber orchestra, remains Menotti's most popular opera for young audiences. A nine-year-old boy who has just moved to town is mocked by his classmates because of his immense size and his name, Poponel Skosvodomonit. Miss Hope, his new teacher, tells the boy of Dr Shrink, who has invented a shrinking machine. The mother takes the boy to the doctor, who says he will be able to help Poponel reach a normal size but at a price – the boy must conform to everyone else’s actions. When Mad Dog, a terrorist, comes to the school and demands a hostage, only Poponel volunteers. His act makes him grow until he overwhelms the terrorist. It is only then that he realizes his special height enables him to help people. Everyone's the way they are for a reason.
 

Skladatelj Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007) je eden izmed najvidnejših predstavnikov ameriške glasbe 20. stoletja. Izjemen je bil njegov prispevek k operi, ki ji je v nenaklonjenih časih avantgarde omogočil vnovični razcvet in jo približal širokemu krogu občinstva. Leta 1939 je napisal prvo opero za radijski medij, Stara devica in tat, še prej pa se je z opero Amelija gre na ples uvrstil med najbolj priljubljene ameriške skladatelje. Na ameriški celini je najbolj znan po »božični operi« Amahl in nočni obiskovalci, ki sodi tudi med pionirska dela, napisana za tedaj nov medij, televizijo. Za svoje ustvarjalno delo je dvakrat prejel Pulitzerjevo nagrado, in sicer za opero z nenavadno tematiko Medij in za angažirano, še danes aktualno glasbeno-gledališko delo Konzul, za katero je, tako kot tudi za vse druge opere, besedilo napisal sam. 

Menotti je bil edinstven pri nagovarjanju najmlajšega občinstva in tako je za otroke napisal kar šest opernih enodejank. Opera Help, help Globolinks je nastala po naročilu hamburške opere, preostale so prvo izvedbo doživele na ameriških odrih, kmalu pa so postale del repertoarja svetovnih glasbenih hiš. Med priljubljena dela se uvršča tudi operna enodejanka Deček, ki je prehitro rasel. Občuteno besedilo, ki ga je napisal skladatelj tudi po »navdihu lastnih izkušenj«, izpostavlja problem socialne vključenosti in sprejemanja drugačnosti. Skladatelj se velikim težavam večine otrok v obdobju odraščanju posveti z vso pesniško občutljivostjo, hkrati pa z radoživostjo ter z otroški domišljiji lastno hudomušnostjo reši vse zaplete in težave. 

Predstavitev umetniške ekipe in nastopajočih umetnikov na spletni strani www.glasbenamatica.si 

Performed by: Vesna Zornik, Polona Janežič, Boštjan Gombač, Tibor Mihelič Syed, Boštjan Narat, Robert Rebolj
Directed by: Ivana Djilas
Production: Cankarjev dom, Kulturno umetniško društvo Adapter
 

For their Enci benci Katalenci project, the Katalena band finds inspiration in counting-out rhymes, distinctly rhythmical, gibberish formulas full of mysterious words used by children, usually as a preliminary to games, to assign roles. The counting-out rhymes are handed down from one generation to the next, transmitted orally. A selection of Slovenian counting-out rhymes was published in the collection Enci benci na kamenci (Mladinska knjiga Publishing House). A counting-out rhyme is a game in itself – a game of coincidence. And this seemingly nonsensical counting-out was what inspired Katalena’s wide variety of stories, poems, motifs or ingenious ideas.
 

Performers: Kvintet bratov Smrtnik, Dekleta Smrtnik vocal group with accordionist Tomaž Boškin

Eichmann in Jerusalem is a first-class theatrical and social event. It does so in an ostensibly incredibly simple, if not banal way, but at the same time, it is precisely through this asceticism that a painful subject can be addressed head-on: the subject of crime, of evil and the consequences it leads to. So: The ensemble cast, on the apron of the stage, face-to-face with the front row stalls, first inform us about the literary and cinematic sources for the production (the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt’s report on the banality of evil, and Lanzmann's nine-hour masterpiece, Shoah), outline their view of the Holocaust and touch on the well-oiled Nazi death machine.

The actors reconstruct the testimonies of survivors not as living witnesses, but as today's readers and viewers, in a way that is not pathetic, but restrained, realistic, unexaggerated, and rather explicit. Attention is given to details, not excessive depictions. The actors address the audience directly as if engaged in a discussion. Their insistence on a documentary approach turns the performance into a terrifying reminder of the atrocities that men can inflict on their fellow human beings, totally without regret and with a complete lack of moral judgment and ethical responsibility – two major threats posed by extreme nationalism, the monster that never completely vacates the social fabric.