Spider Festival

Spider project (Athens) poster, 2010

Defying categorical delineation, under the artistic direction of Matej Kejžar, the Spider project has come to be known as a festival of radical bodies. It is at once an "itinerant" contemporary dance and performing arts festival, a transnational artistic network, a platform for modular and transferable artistic projects and a potential for mobility and residencies. While its main production vehicle is the Ljubljana-based Pekinpah Association, the actual nodal points have included specific artistic communities based in Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Ljubljana, Lyon and Zagreb, among others, but the festival continuously weaves a web that grows and shifts, anticipating the newest currents in contemporary dance and hybrid performative art.

Spider Ljubljana

The first Spider Ljubljana was held in 2011 in Španski borci Culture Centre. In partnership with En-Knap Productions and ŠKUC Association, it hosted dance performances, workshops (on dance, visual creation and writing), discussions and parties. A year later, the same venue hosted the international dance project Spider: At Once. In 2013 – under the name Spider Expand! – a festival was once again organised with artists from throughout Europe and also from Brazil. The festival then moved to Stara Elektrarna - Old Power Station, calling itself Spider White (2014) and Spider Slang (2015), still bringing an exciting and non-genre-bound programme, from body art to contemporary dance, from exhibitions to concerts.

Recent editions have been held in Plečnik Auditorium, an outdoor amphitheatre in Ljubljana's Tivoli Park.

Some of the foreign artists who have performed or otherwise participated in the Ljubljana-based Spider events include Cécile Laloy (FR), Gabriel Smeets (NL), Pavlos Kountouriotis (GR/UK), Fernando Belfiore (BR/NL), Benjamin Sebastian (UK), Julien Monty & Michaël Pomero (FR) of Loge 22, Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen (DK), Alexandros Psychoulis & Yannis Arvanitis (GR), Saša Božić (HR), Petra Hrašćanec (HR). Of the local artists, we've seen Matej Kejžar, Leja Jurišić, Teja Reba, Urša Vidic, Andreja Kopač, Ana Romih, Rosana Hribar, Uroš Kaurin, Tomaž Grom, etc.

Background

The Spider concept was initiated by Slovenian dancer and choreographer Matej Kejžar, who invited Michaël Pomero (France) and Antigone Gyra (Greece) to participate in an international interdisciplinary structure that could transcend the established national borders, festival formats and artistic practices. They engaged various artists from different cultures and from various artistic fields and milieus (dancers, choreographers, musicians, writers, sculptors, visual artists), soon temporarily enlarging the urban triangle of Athens-Lyon-Ljubljana with events in Zagreb, Salzburg and Maribor (the latter in the context of Maribor, European Capital of Culture 2012 programme).

Numerous events and festivals held under the brand of Spider and its various editions – SPIDER RES (performance residencies and research), SPIDER EVENT/GATHERINGS (performance gatherings of international artists, workshops, showings of residency results), SPIDER TALKS (a public debate and project meetings) and SPIDER EXPAND! (a festival format of Spider, called "An Itinerant Artistic Manifestation" and adapted and repeated in collaborating cities of its network).

External links

Spider Festival

Contents

Spider Ljubljana

Background

See also

External links

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