YAC and HNK Rijeka - a fantastic dance Saturday

The dancers and creators of Katja Dance Company regularly attend performances and trainings outside our house. Above all, to nourish our souls with the work and creativity of other artists, to see the possibilities and ways of thinking about variations of stories, to learn about levels of technique, and of course, to meet and support other artists.

📸 Leon Štefanić

This time we went to Rijeka again, to our neighbors, where we were invited as guests of Yellowbiz Art Collective and HNK Ivan Zajc Rijeka. We responded with great pleasure to the invitation and spent a unique day on the Adriatic coast, crowned with an evening visit to the truly beautiful Rijeka Opera and Ballet House and the performance "What Do You See, or Not" by choreographer Michel Pastorini and performed by the well-known Marija Matarranz de las Heras (with whom we successfully collaborated this year), Michele Pastorini and Valentin Chou. All three are champions of the Rijeka ballet and have a rich dance history and career. This year they founded their own dance collective, within which they want to create something different. We are happy that we have connected this year and hope that we will be able to organize dance education at the highest level with all three. We hope that dancers across Slovenia will recognize the true value of these workshops.

📸 Leon Štefanić

The creators said of their first production:

"Audiences naturally seek answers to what they see. It is human to try to understand what we see, often through simplification or assumptions. This production plays with that instinct – how easy it is to misunderstand a situation and how these misinterpretations can shape our perceptions. The work explores these themes through a dynamic and multi-layered narrative. The biggest challenge was translating a concept that was constantly getting complicated. The characters we were developing required depth: they had needs, questions and answers that we had to explore and convey. We also faced the challenge of creating something rich and interesting with just three dancers and live music. It was a delicate balancing act to ensure that the piece was not too long or uneven in rhythm or story.

Another layer of our work touches on belonging. Because we come from different countries – Italy (Michele), Spain (Maria) and France (Valentin) – and because we had "Having had the opportunity to live in places as diverse as Switzerland, Germany and Canada, we have all experienced the need to reinvent ourselves. This story reflects a man's journey for his own place, self-understanding and grappling with power dynamics, group identity and individuality."

📸 Leon Štefanić

Michele had been thinking about the concept for a long time before the idea was officially proposed to the Croatian National Theatre’s director Ivan Zajc at the end of last season. “It will take more than ten weeks of intensive collaboration until the premiere. However, the seeds of the project were sown much earlier. They started talking to the musicians in June and July. So, in reality, six months have passed since the beginning, and the last three have been focused on realizing their vision.”

This time, the contemporary dance performance is accompanied by live music by the ReVibrant Trio, which consists of Pedro Rosenthal Campuzano on percussion, Osman Eyublu on violin, and Golnar Mohajeri on cello. They are excellent performers themselves and long-time members of the Rijeka Orchestra.

Working with the ReVibrant Trio was a dynamic and evolving process. They had many conversations about the project and its themes, and they gave the musicians the freedom to create within the desired emotional landscape. It kept going back and forth. They are used to working with existing music, but the musicians wanted to see the choreography first. This dialogue enriched the collaboration, and the fact that they joined them in the studio brought a raw and sensitive working energy. Each performance is slightly different due to the live music, which makes it all the more unique.

📸 Milan Đekić

The extremely dramatic lighting design of the performance by Kristian Baljarevski put the entire performance in the right light, who and what YAC is. An innovative, acrobatic, technically perfected, fluid, intertwining debut with a clearly visible result of what this trio is capable of, as they spent up to nine hours a day in rehearsals. They are a dance and artistic evolution of themselves and their private and professional lives. In February, the performance will tour Sicily, but we really want the performance to also visit the stage of Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana, as it certainly deserves to be the central temple of Slovenian culture due to its quality and actors.

"From the first to the last minute, the performance thrilled me and, while watching, evoked feelings of weightlessness, lightness, complexity, and above all, the exceptional dance language of three incredible dancers who can do the impossible. The level of trust between them due to the extremely demanding partnering is indescribable, because at times we don't even understand how something is possible. Mimicry, costume design (which is Marija's work) and choreography, which is stunningly beautiful, elegant, strong and different. The several-minute applause at the end, repeated bows, all this shows that we, the audience, understood that we had watched something truly exceptional. Bravo and a deep tribute to the dancers and musicians." (Katja Vidmar)

We are convinced that we will see and hear a lot more about this YAC and we look forward to the success and journey of this performance, as well as all the new ones that will be born.