Katarína Brestovanská / dancer and choreographer. Her works intertwine dance/performance hand in hand with music, musical partiture, digital and experimental technologies. She closely collaborates with director and dramaturgist Jana Smokoňová. Since 2017 together they have been a conceptional and creative couple. In the frame of music her collaborative partners are Martin Kosorín, Adam Dekan, Ján Kružliak jr., Kamil Mihalov, Marek Žoffaj.
Katarína Brestovanská together with companions has created several authorial performances (such as Micro v macro, Indigo, DUAL, In between yearning and death, Shifting systems). The work DUAL (2017) won an award for the Most Innovative Performance of the Fintdaz International Festival in Chile, along with an award for its contribution to the development of artistic and cultural values in the field of contemporary art. As choreographer she collaborates with german dance collective The MichaelDouglas Kollektiv. She is part of projects of dance art innovator and conflict mediator Dana Caspersen / USA. Their collaborations focus leads to choreographical preparation of participatory events with an overlap into social themes as polarization, violence, corruption.
She graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Commenius University in Bratislava, department human resources management and cultural and social science. Katarína Brestovanská established EN VORENTOE dancing project in 2021. EN VORENTOE encompasses her previous achievements in art productions. It grows with the label bearing cooperation, ingenuity, finesse, multidimensionality, sometimes minimalism, another time quantity. It describes body, free choice of topics through dance/movement means of expression blending together with music, musical composition, sound and experimental technologies.
Photo: Peter Brestovanský
K. Brestovanská: IN BETWEEN YEARNING AND DEATH
What is one’s relationship to his or her own yearning and options? What is stopping us from decision making and responsibility taking? What or who is a driver of our decisions?
Should the very essence (innate character) of a man be denied or suppressed, one falls ill, sometimes visibly, sometimes latently... This very essence is subtle and delicate, and it can be easily overpowered by a habit and cultural pressure... Though denied, the very essence lies beneath, constantly fighting for update. Each deviation (from our very essence), each crime against our nature is recorded in our unconsciousness and makes us despise ourselves.
A man can only act for himself or herself if he or she can accede to one’s own yearnings, own feelings, and own body. Failing to do so, he or she is then unable to make wishes, yearn for something, project himself or herself into the future, so initial will-power dies at birth.
The process of desire’s arising is comprehensive. It includes psychological, social, cultural, religious, and other influences. Yearning, for a healthy individual, is an integral part of values such as freedom, will, truth, and change. Our intention was to reveal a state when we are mindful of our yearnings, what are our innermost desires, how to manifest them at individual or collective level. But, at the same time, we do not cling to them as if they were
the only important in our life. They are just present, I live them and share them sensitively, I listen a lot, and I assist others on their way to their own yearning. This is the state we call free efforts or effortless being.
Being is given to us just as it is required from us. One is responsible for his or her being. Literally, his or her answer is required when asked: what you made of yourself? The one who asks is the judge, it is, actually, himself. And no one else gets us closer than ourselves alone.
Irvin D. Yalom, Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm and the project’s creative team
Concept, performance: Katarína Brestovanská
Script editor: Jana Smokoňová
Music, performance: Adam Dekan, Martin Iľanovský
Costume designer: Petra Kovács
Set designers: Sebastián Komáček
Associate choreographer, dance supervision: Andrej Petrovič
Lighting design and equipment: Slavomír Šmálik et al.
Lyrics: Katarína Brestovanská, Adam Dekan
Proofreader: Zuzana Hojstričová
Voice instructor: Ivana Estrella
Media set: Marianna Lutková
Trailer: Jana Smokoňová, Lukáš Teren, Adam Dekan et al.
Production: Katja Thalerová
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