LJUBLJANA DANCE THEATRE: Clone; choreography and animation Matjaz Faric, music Igor Stravinsky, lighting Zoran
Najdenov, costumes Mura; dancers:Tanja Skok- Valentina Cabro, Gregor Lustek, Rosana Hribar, Igor Sviderski, Mateja Rebolj,
Matjaz Faric; premiere 30 May 1997 in the PTL hall, Prule, Ljubljana.

Without a doubt , Clone is Matjaz Faric s most mature dance adventure, pure in terms of the selection of material, clear-cut in
composition and well conceived in dramatic construction. He started with pop art socialist realist esthetics in April the 6th
(1987), screamed ecstatically over the distressing imperfection of the world in his solo performance Breakdown (1988),
problematised machismo in Red Alarm (1989), boldly defied male inconsistency in the Emotional (1990), and brought skaters,
angels and ballet bars on stage in Crossroom (1991). Wind, Sand and Stars (1991) is doubtless his most sugary post-modern
performance, Icht (1992) a kind of anthropological laboratory in which man and woman find themselves, Derr (1992) a very
simple dance miniature which slips into amateurism here and there, and Solo (1993) a superb solo dance statement. Finally he
got to grips with the classical giants - Swan Lake (1994), Romeo and Juliet (1995), The Rite of Spring (1996). But in Clone, all
this becomes invisible, removed and relegated to memory. Except for the fact that, just as with its twelve predecessors, Clone
reverberates from the parameters of social and aesthetic typicality.
In Clone, Faric has come face to face with the question of the limits of an individuals physical freedom, his imagination and
uniqueness placed side by side with the achievements of modern technology, the question of how to continue creating an
original vocabulary of physical language, how to dance whilst being aware of the fact that a computer simulated body is
incomparably more accomplished and computer simulated choreography offers an immeasurable number of transformations of
dance and movement, too many for a single human lifetime. Faric, then, does not explore the interaction between technology
and art, but seeks to uncover if and where art can still be original, authentic, humane.
So he places, on a bare stage, six dancers who are dressed at first in first in uniform black costumes and then gradually
individualized by T-shirts of different colors. On a white canvas behind them, there extends like a deus ex machina an
enlarged computer screen. By animating the virtual dance world which the choreographer himself sets in motion with a
computer mouse, the screen seems silently to direct the events on stage. Commands to the computer concur with the
choreographers equally wooden commands - forward, backward, jump, look, arm, down, fall which the dancers constantly
repeating like chorus of an ancient drama. But the single, six time cloned choreography crumbles and breaks all the time
through individual deviations , the small, emotion - radiating stories harmonized in tone and movement. The computer treats
them as errors in the programme, becomes hysterical and blurs the screen, but the choreographer sees them as a spark which
ignites a unique individual imagination. Faric s answer to the aforesaid question, then, could be that the freedom of a dancing
body in the technical world starts at the point where the logic of computer programmes ceases to be attained. As an answer, it
is neither original nor unexpected.
What makes clone different from many performances which tackle similar issues, is the fact that Faric s production is not
staging of a theoretical re-examination of new technological phenomena and the fascinating opportunities they offer to
modern art, for such productions by offering only an exciting concept and by no means an exciting performance, often
impress one as totally cold, empty and wooden. In opposition to them, Clone, performed to Faric s musical obsession,
Stravinsky, bears only a casual mark of real technology and in a certain sense is even unmodern. Renouncing the desire to tell
the story, and in a manner so far untypical of him, Faric brings to the stage a distinctly soft movement which genuinely
undulates through the empty space and in the process achieves suspense and becomes ever more individual, warm, character
- hued and touching. This, among other things, calls for dancers who have an elaborate personal presence on stage, are
capable of sustaining in a physically extreme exacting performance the energy tension between the stage and the audience
and, consequently, produce enjoyment on both sides.
In this sense, the delicately powerful Valentina Cabro is a real discovery (we saw her in Natasa Kos's Albrecht), Igor Sviderski
surprises us with each new project and is making his way to the top of domestic modern dance, the dancing of Gregor Lustek
and Rosana Hribar is increasingly gaining in expressive force, and Mateja Rebolj and Matjaz Faric have already earned
themselves distinctly individual chapters in the short history of modern dance in Slovenia.
In short, not only in the context of the domestic world of dance, Clone is an extremely rare, towering performance with an
integral structure supported by the choreographer's firm hand and danced in a single breath. A performance in which every
thought, every movement - everything, is in its proper place. And with a purpose.

ZENJA LEILER

GERMAN/DEUTSCH

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