Performance

Kekec is a play that continues a tradition of productions for children at the Slovenian Youth Theatre, a tradition that includes plays such as Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking, Peter Pan and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but which has now turned to a focus on classic Slovenian children's literature, with a particular intention to use plays geared to child audiences to link theatrical skill with the magic of movement and language. For this reason, the choice of director and choreographer Branko Potočan to direct this play, wherein he has, with the ensemble of the Theatre, ventured into dialogue with Vandot, has resulted in a play that is undoubtedly innovative – a motion-theatre play for children who have no opportunity to encounter elements of contemporary dance and physical theatre in the education process. This is a short, dynamic and playful production of a well-known story told by little shepherds, in which three children from the city (or the country) play out the story of the country boy hero Kekec. […] The production makes extremely economic and insightful use of its props (boards, sticks and ropes), tying them skilfully into images of the moving stage, rocks, mountains, doors, tables, dancing equipment, tools and “weapons”, images in which spaces and pictures follow each other with film-like speed and deftness. This latter quality allows the play to be a precise, but at the same, a considerably loose dramaturgical puzzle, which, with the help of moving props, comes together in an eloquent and entertaining tale. […]

Director

 Choreographer and dancer Branko Potočan was born in Trbovlje, Slovenia in 1963. While in primary school, he learnt ballroom and traditional dances. Later, in the 1980s, he formed his own break-dance group, Gumiflex. Before embarking on a professional dancing career, he worked as a miner in a coalmine in Hrastnik, and also studied at the Faculty of Sport.

In 1986, he joined the Plesni Teater Ljubljana (Ljubljana Dance Theatre) Troupe, and in 1990, became a member of Belgian group Ultima Vez, then led by Wim Vandekeybus, where he danced for the next two and a half years. In 1994, he established yet another dance troupe: Fourklor. He has already directed ten plays with his dancers, and had numerous performances both in Slovenia and abroad. This group also received an award from the New Alternative Theatre Festival, INFANT 97, as well as from the 1998 MESS Theatre Festival. In 1996, Potočan himself received the Slovenian state award for contributions to creative art, the Zlatna ptica (Golden Bird) Award, for his performance in I Dream a Memory, but I Remember Dreaming.

Branko Potočan is also active as a choreographer and choreography consultant in various theatre productions. He has worked for a couple of years with the MGL Theatre, choreographing many successful performances, and is currently directing his own project. He also received 2005 Zlatni štapić (Golden Wand) Award for his direction of the child dance production Kekec. In 2003, he also began working as a choreographer with the Sarajevo National Theatre.

Theatre

Slovensko mladinsko gledališče (the Slovenian Youth Theatre) was established in 1955 as Slovenia's first professional theatre that gears to children and the youth. In the 1980s, the Theatre initiated unique interdisciplinary explorations on stage, producing plays such as Mass in A-minor, Class Enemy, Romeo and Juliet, Persians, Ana etc. These plays received high acclaim for both their political involvement and their innovative approach to the issue of the mise-en-scene. In the past 20 years, the Slovenian Youth Theatre has continued to work with directors with innovative and avant-garde dialogues, exceptionally dramatic texts and individual poetic credos, including Vito Taufer, Matjaž Pograjc, Dragan Zivadinov, Eduard Miller, Diego de Brea etc. In 2007, the Theatre celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with the publication of an illustrated history. It has had several guest performances in Hamburg, Belgrade, London, Moscow and Madrid, and has also hosted various plays and performances from other countries. The Theatre aims to develop new forms of theatrical practice, new visual paradigms, as well as new perspectives of the classical, modern and post-modern.