M&N Dance Company – diaphane

Labyrinth

diaphane — Tue, 24 May 2016 19:27:44 +0000

Performance deals with the symbol of the labyrinth known from Greek mythology. Labyrinth as a life full of obstacles and decisions. We can say that the Minotaurs in the labyrinth do not exist; but everyday monsters that we have to cope with and with whom we have to fight surely do: doubts, fears, worries, regrets and uncertainties. We learn to fight them with our most powerful weapons: intelligence, memory, will, heart. Every time we think we found the exit we bump into new obstacles. Trapped between frightening walls with no way out.

PRESS

The abstract movement repertoire, which is very characteristic for Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia in its individually soft flow, results in a multitude of unusually beautiful pictures in harmony with their company, which on the one hand stimulate the imagination and on the other hand leave any kind of freedom of interpretation. Searching, struggling, the always uncertain, successful or unsuccessful use of mind and imagination, forms a poetic bowl that the dancers fill and enrich with their movements subtly and precisely: edges and corners flash frighteningly, surprisingly harmonious.

Eveline Koberg, International Storytelling Festival

S/HE

diaphane — Tue, 24 May 2016 21:27:01 +0000

« Could I be walking higher? »

In our search for completeness, happiness and fulfilment we often rely on the Other, the man or the woman next to us. We have a feeling that once, a long time ago, gods split us in two, and that ever since we’ve been relentlessly searching for our other half. We’ve hoped to find our own oneness in the ideal of the romantic love, in the perfection of the person with whom we’ve united our life, yet this continues to leave us alone, closed into our own loneliness and unattainability of such ideal in our everyday and earthly life. Perhaps the relentless search will one day bring us to our goal, and that other He or She will come to life around and inside us, merge with us to form an indestructible alliance; and perhaps we’ll then find that we didn’t, more than anything in the world, need to be loved by someone, but to love someone.

PRESS

«A performance that has not left me indifferent. A performance about love, loneliness, oneness, wholeness... With top dancers, live music, paraphrased texts by Brecht, Rumi … Zajc, Plato, Song of Songs … The opening movement of the excellent dancing couple, Nastja Bremec Rynia in Michal Rynia elicited an enthusiastic response even from those who know nothing about contemporary dance. The dance of two bodies that represent a whole, ONE, is done so perfectly that one is convinced that perfect love, eternal love exists. You gave us an exceptional event, a lot of questions that a human being asks, but few answers. One must find one’s own. We have not come to this world to be loved but to love, that would perhaps be the right answer. The public accompanied the performers from the stage with standing ovations, a reward for two months of hard work, sleepless hours, all with the purpose to prepare a major masterwork. You made it, dear artists. Thank you for a splendid evening. Extraordinary!»

Zarja Trkman, Inovel Media

Room with a View

diaphane — Tue, 24 May 2016 19:26:15 +0000

The performance is based on the novel “I Called Him Tie” by an Austrian writer Milena Michiko Flašar. It tells a story of contemporary existence marked by the anxiety brought on by the lack of compassion and difficult human relationships.

A young man leaves the room – which he has inhabited for quite some time. He takes shelter on a park bench, where he engages in a conversation with a stranger. An older office worker, a Salary-man. The setting itself marks them as outsiders, unlike others of their kind who keep to their rooms or offices. Alongside their tentative, budding friendship, stories of what brought them there unfold. The experience that affection is nourishment, that sadness is veiled by a smile and that true friendship is possible gives them courage to take their leave and turn a new leaf.

PRESS

«The choreographic flow, however, intensifies interestingly, from the mysterious beginning of the magical silence as it grows and solidifies in the sketch of personality states, all the way to the final well-conceived group dance. The group of dancers is followed as a well-tuned choir, seducing an optimistic conclusion and disappearing through the open door from a lonely room of intrigue and memories towards the outside light. New energy written in the pulse of various dance steps and choreographic attractions. The authors of the dance project, Nastja Bremec and Michal Rynia, are undoubtedly representatives of a new choreographic wave that seeks and designs a new movement language, including new dance content tailored to the new generation, which also enthusiastically accepted the performance.»

Daliborka Podboj, Parada Plesa

Conspiracy of Silence

diaphane — Tue, 24 May 2016 19:26:15 +0000

What makes human communication and talking so special is imagination. Man is the only living creature that is able to talk about intangible things and believe in them. What is more, he is the only living creature that cannot live without invented truths. He has to believe in something, even when he believes that he does not believe in anything. History has given us many truths and taken away from us just as many of them. Truths that were deadly serious in their time are ridiculously funny in another. Nowadays we are living amidst a suffocating abundance of truths that are giving shape and direction to our lives. And it is within this abundance that we, the fragile and scared ones, are fighting for our own, one and only truth. Fighting for meaning and existence has made us deaf to the point that we are screaming and we cannot hear others singing their own truths.

PRESS

«The exceptional, emotionally touching dance-theatre performance Conspiracy of Silence The work with a marked note of social criticism was conceived and choreographed by the dancers Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec. ... The main idea of the performance that the dancers studied, searched for its meaning inside the spirit of the present times, and expressed through fluid, dynamic, at times softened, at times abrupt dance elements, including acrobatic ones.

One of the outstanding attractions of the evening was the duet of the choreographers’ tandem; one clearly feels how they feel each other. Accompanied by sensual sounds of the violin (music by Diaphane, editor’s note) they fuse into one, become symbiotic; their virtuosistic, acrobatic dance elements that require precise knowledge of one’s body, sense of focus, self-control, have a very light feeling. For the rest, the dance work dynamically enacts various formations, from duets, solos, men’s quartets to septets. On the whole, the most outstanding was the already mentioned Michal Rynia with his unique, consummate, innerly harmonic movement.

Anyhow – a work that was premiered in November 2016 at the Nova Gorica National Theatre takes the spectator to an entirely new dimension of social reality and does not leave him indifferent. This is clearly proved by a standing ovation at the end of the show such as we witnessed already on last year’s first night. And yes, the two main artists and authors of the show can be described as – significant, outstanding, inspiring elements of the Slovenian and international dance scene.»…

Nina Žnidaršič, Parada Plesa