Creative Crossroads Cycle One 2023–2024
Sonja Pregrad
Sonja Pregrad is a choreographer, performer and performance curator/organiser based in Croatia.
"Emancipating the figure of a dancer, I question this subject-object chiasm of her performing body. From object to materiality, embodiment, touch, synaesthesia, sensuousness, receptivity and submission (or at least their oscillation game with assertion and imposing) as vehicles for performance. Choreography then for me is a construction of the quality of attention, space of inquiry into bodies (animate and inanimate), materialities and performativities, as well as into their status within the relationships of dance as a medium with other fields of art and thought.
In 2023/2024 I am working on a choreographic research and production (to be premiered in November 2023) On e.motional geometry of Plant in collaboration with Nika Pećarina, Lana Hosni, Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Anna Javoran and Eva Priečkova. Next to that I am touring a solo Object of Dance, produced in 2022, next to the group work DOWL produced in 2021. (Croatian Dancers Association Award for the Best Group Performance). These works expand my interest in drag as an expanded strategy to address performance and dance, continue the methodology of the group/composite body choreography and unfold the idea of sensuousness as a vehicle for performance."
Of drag, plants and other objects (of dance)
at ImPulsTanz
In the frame of her Creative Crossroads residency in Vienna, Sonja Pregrad will teach a Workshop at ImPulsTanz.
Participants will be working with the moving and performing in the range: sensorial, sensuous, formal (literal) and too literal, doing karaoke and contemporary dance in drag. Observing nature, knowing one can’t observe nature and think one will really see it, will be another part of this workshop, while also performing from somewhere inside of this conundrum, creating a durational performance against the theatre as an expectation.
Of drag, plants and other objects (of dance) is an intermediate level workshop. For more information and booking take a look at ImPulsTanz' website.
O by Sonja Pregrad
Residency at Uferstudios Berlin
Sonja Pregrad looks into the spectacle of plant life with a team of six dancers and vocalists from Zagreb and Bratislava. They look into the way plants pass time, the ways their body parts move, the ways they flirt and procreate, the ways they are dying.
As one of the performers says: “You can’t observe nature and think that you will see it - understanding the playful and ‘artifice’ position of us as humans (and creators) being both of nature and in conflict with it. In the imagination of the performance, the plants become drag acts. They make you look at them from a very close and intimate place and then from another, high up in the hill… to them overgrowing the imaginary, so called 4th wall of the theatre.”
The movements that unfold within this performance come from different places - sensorial, affective, formal and historical, vocal and poetic, conjuring up an energetic geometry of this dance which is also a poem to (plant) life.
Rather than subject verb object but subject subject subject
I enjoyed a symbiosis
I could stay longer with something
A different kind of literal
Literal sensual shyness
Plant mouth singing
Dirty, sharp, no daylight
Sitting in the garden, watching you do things
You can not go too far away from anything
Movement of the space made to have no movement
How high? Where is the light? rain? Wind? What is the ground like? Season? Scale?
What landscape is?
Something untouchable, distant, open without details
Grass that will never grow
Codependence
Clusters of dandelions
A circle, precise circle
Oh Grief
It was interesting to die and realize
and not the end
Something nice about passivity
I didn’t mind the space
Gravity is so present
I was thinking, how do I attract?
All the images from the humanity and purpose of life
Trees colliding and something about the hair
I need to be in the same position with you
Field widening
Grass that will never grow
Codependence
Clusters of dandelions
A circle, precise circle
Light and reflections, when the boundaries between things blur
Slowly shifting habitat
I went to the passage, spending time in the dark at the threshold
It’s still not clear for me what sentences are for and how long they might go on…
Idea and choreography: Sonja Pregrad in collaboration with Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Lana Hosni, Anna Javoran, Nika Pećarina, Eva Priečková
Dance: Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Lana Hosni, Anna Javoran, Nika Pećarina, Eva Priečková
Music and space concept: Nika Pećarina
Costume design: Bruna Jakupović
Scenography: Liberta Mišan
Light design: Ema Kani
Sound manager: Martina Gucić
Visuals: Lana Lephamer
Production assistant: Tea Kantoci
Technical manager: Tomislav Maglečić
Trailer: Sindri Uču
Photographs: Nina Đurđević
Friend of the performance: Silvia Marchig
Trailer O by Sonja Pregrad
Trailer Object of Dance by Sonja Pregrad
Sonja Pregrad is teaching at ImPulsTanz
Sonja Pregrad is coming to Vienna for a Creative Crossroads residency. During her stay she will teach at ImPulsTanz a workshop Of drag, plants and other objects (of dance).
OBJECT OF DANCE in San Francisco
Sonja Pregrad, our Croatian Creative Crossroad artist, will show her solo performance OBJECT OF DANCE at the KH FRESH Festival in San Francisco this Sunday!