With the project Broader Space and with co-creator and fellow dancer Jan Marolt, Kaja Lin Jagodič Avguštin delights audiences once again! The article was prepared for the Parada plesa portal by Daliborka Podboj.
Broader Space (photo: Anka Simončič)
Choreographer, teacher and dancer Kaja Lin Jagodič Avguštin is working with Plesni teater Ljubljana (PTL) for the third time, and filling their theatre hall with her latest dance works, produced independently and by PTL. The collaboration with PTL began with the performance Odtujenost (Alienation, May 2022), when Kaja Lin, a young mother, decided on a new creative cycle. Last October came her whirling dance poetics: Orbit-a, about Her — the guardian of the home — and Him, the eternal traveller, in a co-created duet with Mickael Mars Rivièra. And as the saying goes, third time lucky: Kaja Lin Jagodič Avguštin surprised us again on the PTL stage with a new premiere (4 November), Širši prostor / Broader Space. Her artistic credo gave her no rest, and into her choreography she pressed the not exactly kindly mark of human temper, perceptible at every breadth and intensity of time and space, both then and now.
Orbit-a (photo: Drago Videmšek)
Kaja Lin Jagodič Avguštin is one of those dance artists who built themselves through dance from an early age — first as a child in a jazz ballet and hip hop group, completing her dance schooling (2009) at the Conservatory of Music and Ballet in Ljubljana (KGBL). Even then she drew attention to herself, performing during her school years at events of the Slovenian Association of Ballet Artists (DBUS) and taking part in the programmes of the SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana. At the OPUS1 competitions of the JSKD RS her creative power came especially to the fore, crowned several times with the highest awards. After finishing ballet secondary school she went to Israel, where she danced as a trainee at the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company II theatre, and a year later took up employment there. In Israel she danced with various dance companies until 2014, one of them the Excellence Program of the Batsheva Dance Company. She left Israel and a year later took up a post as a soloist at the Italian theatre ImPerfect Dancers. During this active international dance career she returned to Slovenia from time to time and took part in the projects Kjara’s Dance Project, MN Dance Company, in Matjaž Farič’s project Druga stran and with the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. Recently she has also devoted herself to teaching: she teaches dance and choreography at the Alma Mater Europaea Dance Academy and occasionally at JSKD RS workshops.
Broader Space (photo: Anka Simončič)
The stage of Broader Space is, contrary to the title, divided into two halves along its length by a black line that is not quite a line but a seemingly voluminous band; at the back stand two musical instruments: drums and bass. Then two figures appear on stage, as though glued each to their own half: She to the left and He to the right of the dividing line. At first you think this is a continuation of her last project, Orbit-a, co-created and performed with the French choreographer Mickael Mars Rivièra, who takes part in this new project too, though as movement director and artistic adviser. The new dancer and co-creator whom Kaja Lin invited into her new project is Jan Marolt, a dancer of urban dance styles who already stood out in Maša Kagao Knez’s choreographic-dramatic work S samimi samotami obdana samota. To original music performed by musicians Blaž Celarec and Žiga Golob, the movement pulse of the duet begins, each on their own side of the stage, their glances hidden beyond their own boundary. They respond to the music, improvise and provoke spontaneous movement which, with the lighting and technical work of Janko Oven, acquires a mystical stage tone; dramaturgy was in the hands of Urša Adamič and costume design of Suzana Krapež Ermers.
Their opening movement makes it clear that they are entangled in a mutual struggle, as each tests their personal boundaries and, with small supple gambits, defiantly encroaches on the other’s border territory. In her movement amplitudes She is forceful and serious, while He devises an endearing burlesque of supple challenges, enjoying himself, playing, attacking — yet with the same intention: who will outplay whom. Their combative relationship gradually thickens dramatically to the point where it turns into struggles of wider proportions, which lead to the collapse of the dividing line. And when the dividing line no longer holds the allure of conquest, She withdraws, and He plays out a scene of putting on black jackets, one after another and one on top of another — all those that had served on stage to form the dividing line, more than thirty of them. The glimpses of jackets being put on stir the mind, as, in vivid supple sequences of picking up and putting on jackets of various sizes, He too picks himself up in his own way. And you ask yourself: are these all those possible years of losses and pains that were needed for a new situation to arrive at last? The weight and volume of His new garment (a clutter of jackets) transforms the youthful figure into an ample abundance of (past) years, which unexpectedly leads to a new situation that in the choreography proves to be a new current of peace. And the jackets are peeled off the body one after another at speed, and when the burdens fall away, the time comes for a new duet of dance harmony.
The dance performance Broader Space offers the viewer not only professional dance colour but also a creative fusion of music and movement all its own. It is a dramatically rounded form that lets us sense the difficult turbulence of the present moment. For as it is in the small, so it is reflected in the large and the other way round — which the choreography logically brings to a close in a new mutual relationship, and in favour of life.
I wish everyone an abundance of dance in the new year 2025, and as few burdens as possible! May 2025 be light and joyful, just as the text of Gregor Strniša, Zemlja pleše (song by Mojmir Sepe, 1962), once rang out across the spheres!