Compass Rijeka

Even though the Odyssey seems somewhat narratively naive, its narrative structure constructs a special fictional labyrinth that can be read as a personal journey through an intimate universe, but also as a parable of the new Europe. The Odyssey, an epic about the sea and maritime adventures, is ironically transformed into an exploration of solitude. A whiff of sea salt and algae, the expanse of the coast and secret docks, the silence of the bay, winds and storms, lightning and darkness, birds and fish, the sound of sails and seafoam, mysterious voyages and desperate shipwrecks are proof that we are essentially alone on new shores and always perceived as strangers, even when we are intimately intertwined.

The play Compass aroused great public and professional interest, being featured as a guest performance at several dance festivals, most notably the Operaestate Festival Veneto 2018 in Bassano del Grappa in Italy, Atos de fala 2019 in Rio de Janeiro and one of the world’s oldest and largest dance festivals Impulstanz 2019 in Vienna. In 2020, we are arranging guest performances all over Europe, and we are especially proud of the appearance at Tanzplatform in Munich and upcoming performances in Geneva from 18.-21.11.2020.

PROGRAMME:
Sunday, 11 October – Filodrammatica Hall (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
10 a.m. – 1 p.m. –  Practice and meaning workshop – menthors Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božić
In Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božićs workshop we will engage in the practices of contemporary dance / theater and performance practices, we will oppose these performance practices, see how much they feed on each other, and discuss the issue of performance materials.
The workshop is intended for young artists with interest in and basic prior knowledge of the performing arts, professional actors and dancers, dance and acting students, and other interested students and citizens. The number of participants is limited to 12, the workshop is free. Applications: festival.periskop@gmail.com

“We are often unaware that our own practice already creates in advance a very strong framework for how our performance materials are observed and understood. The aim of this workshop will be to address those compositional practices that are related to the concepts we use in our own artwork, such as: openness, subtlety, clarity, and diversity. Following the interest of each workshop participant, we will try to analyze the process of creating performance material (specific or not), choose its format and discover the many different meanings that the material brings to the stage, whether it is created in a group or in person. Based on the knowledge of our own practice that we share as a starting point, we will explore what performance material is in terms of its production and explore how it can exist in different contexts, applying specific tools between its thinking and production.”

7 p.m. – 8 p.m. – Interview with the artist Simone Aughterlony
Interview with the dance and performance artist Simone Aughterlony, performing as part of the Compass Rijeka programme. The interview is conceived as an open lecture on her approach to her work and projects with a special focus on the Compass project and recent trilogy on the topic of strangers. 

Monday, 12 October – Filodrammatica Hall (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
10 a.m. – 1 p.m. –  Practice and meaning workshop – menthors Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božić
In Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božićs workshop we will engage in the practices of contemporary dance / theater and performance practices, we will oppose these performance practices, see how much they feed on each other, and discuss the issue of performance materials.
The workshop is intended for young artists with interest in and basic prior knowledge of the performing arts, professional actors and dancers, dance and acting students, and other interested students and citizens. The number of participants is limited to 12, the workshop is free. Applications: festival.periskop@gmail.com

Tuesday, 13 October
8 p.m. – Compass performance – Croatian Cultural Centre (HKD), Sušak
The performance is an integral part of Periskop. The presentation of a new  dance-visual project Compass Rijeka wants to transfer the experience of male bodies: sailors (Odysseus) to the female body. What stories, what knowledge is transmitted by a body that transcends language? Where does the body deviate from clear categories and normative conceptions, especially regarding the conceptions and phantasms of gender and sexuality related to the issue of work today?

Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božić have been involved with the Croatian and European dance and theatre scene for many years in different formats and production environments. Their joint works are marked by an insistence on the procedural nature of the works, the invention of stage languages and playing with different operative parts of the performance.

Petra Hrašćanec is active as a dancer, choreographer and teacher of performing arts. Her interest and training focus on contemporary dance, while her works are characterised by the specific use of a multitude of media to study the body and corporeality. In addition to her own works, she performs as an external member of the WEE COMPANY based in Norway, choreographed by Francesco Scavette. She choreographs her works through the artistic organization 21:21 (as one of the art directors) or the partner organization de_facto in cooperation with Croatian institutions (Teatar &TD, Zagreb Youth Theatre, Pogon Jedinstvo and the Zagreb Dance Center). Since 2013, she has worked as a mentor and lecturer of modern dance technique at the Dance Department of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.

Saša Božić is active in a wide variety of fields covering areas from theatre directing, dramaturgy, choreography and the creation of dramatic texts to the organisation of promotional cultural actions and the strategic planning of cultural projects. As a dramatist, he collaborates with renowned choreographers and dancers both locally and abroad. In addition to the numerous collaborative projects, Saša Božić has devised a number of independent drama, dance and multimedia projects that are currently being performed in various Croatian theatres. He successfully and frequently presents his projects in many European theatres: Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Gessnerallee in Zurich, National Dance Centre in Oslo, Bitef, MESS Sarajevo, Zürcher Theater Spektakel in Zurich, Quarantine in Dubrovnik. He is an associate professor of stage movement at the Acting Department of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.

The works of Petra Hrašćanec and Saša Božić have been presented at renowned European dance festivals and theatres, such as: Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, the UOVO Festival in Milan, Dans Centrum Jette in Brussels, Les Subsistances in Lyon and Théâtre de La Bastille in Paris, among others.

Simone Aughterlony is an independent artist based in Zurich and Berlin, working predominantly in dance and performance contexts. Over more than decade, she has been devising and producing choreographic works. As a performer she has worked with artists such as Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, Forced Entertainment and Jorge León, Phil Hayes amongst others. Engaging with alternative forms of kinship, new constellations of family emerge within her process as possibilities for reconfiguring a culture of togetherness that foster both familiar and unknown quantities. Her works playfully connect with representation and its saturation, seeping into and embracing the phenomenology of misrecognition and the absurd. Simone approaches the performance genre as a world-building practice where she navigates the contradiction between the domination of desire alongside the agency of all elements.