Photo: Sunčan Stone

Mateja Bučar's performance Hurry – Scurry, Stay in Line is part of the accompanying program of the exhibition Dancing, Resisting, (Un)Working – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After, produced and organized by Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia in collaboration with Moderna galerija.

Hurry – Scurry, Stay in Line

Robert Pfaller

»I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Can't no high toned woman make me walk the line«
(Tennessee Ernie Ford, Sixteen Tons)

01 The line functions in Mateja Bučar’s new choreography as the mark of a productive limitation. Not a limit in productivity, on the contrary: a limitation that proves itself to be productive. Movements are thus limited to pertaining to a line. Yet this limitation immediately opens up a space of invention. It brings about all kinds of obvious, fancy, strange or bizarre ways of dealing with one’s attachment to the line. The rule of the line does not just exclude or forbid a number of movements. At the same time it suggests a goal for an abundant number of other movements. It brings about a desire, not to break the rule, but to fulfill it and to reach its goal, maybe by an unexpected move. As soon as the rule of the line is formulated, the spirit of play is provoked – or as it were invoked, engendered. Even the rebellious, outlaw spirit is here not to be understood as the one that violates the rule, but rather as the one that attempts to reach the suggested goal in a strange, funny way, against all possible hindrances.

02 The line brings together a number of movements just like a string unites a number of pearls. Connecting movements by the criterion of their pertaining to the line is a way of bringing movements together that is different from uniting them, for example, by the criterion of their similarity, their juxtaposition, their contrast or their narrative sequence. The rule is never only the opposite of no rule, but as well of several other rules that often remain unacknowledged due to their self-evident, customary character. The rule of the line is the breaking with other rules. Only due to this fact – that it breaks with customary, unacknowledged rules – the rule of the line can bring about the unexpected."

Idea and co-choreography: Mateja Bučar

Music and sound: Drago Ivanuša and J. S. Bach.

Performers, creators in movement and dance: Andreja Rauch Podrzavnik, Nataša Živkovič, Kristina Aleksova, Katja Legin, Tina Valentan, Bojana Robinson, Nina Pertot Weis, Loup Abramovici, Jana Menger, Anamarija Klanjšček, Krityna Peldova and Tini Rozman.

Text: Robert Pfaller

Costume: DUM

Light: DUM, Jaka Šimenc

Production: DUM – Association of Artists.

Co-production: Cukrarna Gallery – Performativa II, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia and Museum of Contemporary Metelkova.

The project is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and City of Ljubljana, Department of Culture.