Битеф

All our dead Brane Potočan, head of the independent artistic co-op Fourklor, has picked a fatal, sensitive, and for Slovenians an especially unpleasant topic for one of his annual projects which continue to charm the audience with refined dance-oriented sensibilities from the very beginning. Yes, I am referring to the sad, inexplicable tendency among the Venets, one Largely prevalent in the sons of this proud nation - the tendency to end their Lives with the gun, poison, or with a rope hung over a barn beam. And the rope certainly is a central element of Melancholy Thoughts, the work of the mischievous choreographer from Zasavje region who always ventures into explorations of flexibility on what appears to be, most often, a drill gear intended for physical exercise and whose projects carry a distinct odour of gymnastic or even acrobatic components. His ropes, however, are not a menacing threat, a curse that plagues the suffering people; they are bening ropes, meant to ease the escape from this miserable world. Prior to this work, Potočan was predominantly occupied with the nostalgic past, with recollections of the bizarre rituals of courtship at the coming of age of his own generation. He and his athletic associates have now offered us a reflection on the whirling vortex of profit-oriented unfree life ridden with cellular phones and intelligent notebooks - the tense transitoriness of the present which has furnished our success-famished men with a new ethical code and with stomach ulcers... Ailments from which one can be saved by the branch of a kind tree, if we leave aside drug abuse and insanity. This is a paraphrase of Kette's poem, the title of which also graces Potoèan's choreography. It is certainly to his credit that he has tackled a theme so prone to futile moralising with a healthy dose of humour. On the other hand, it does seem a trifle naive to save the rope for

"degenerate" yuppies and neurotics without a regard for the fact that it might save us all from happy old age in the family circle, not to mention the Sunday night evergreens radio show... As unbelievable as it gets... Jasa Kramar Kacin, Mladina, March 1998 Now he is hanging from a tree The basic element - this time also a metaphor, not just a gymnastic device - is a rope: it supports freedom and levitation, weighed down by the body it breaks necks, spreads whiteness, and leads into other worlds. The refined choice of scenic elements gives the performance a successful visual and physical identity; at the same time, the effective choreography and the witty, ironic physical presentation of the sucidal mood of the protagonists open up a conspicuously inique world of physical movement: behind the momentum of rushed personal communication and the bustling human crowd, there is a Loneliness hidden firmly, almost macho-like. Bojana Kunst, Razgledi Fourklor - Melancholy Thoughts Urban grappling with the suicide Fourklor: Melancholy Thoughts, choreographed by Brane Potočan, Cankarjev dom. Duša Počkaj Hall, premiere March 6th and 7th, 1998. Melancholy Thoughts, the fourth choreography of Branko Potočan and his group Fourklor, is yet another reflection of Slovenian mindscape; the performance is, a s a rather unusual undertaking for the Slovenian dance scene, based on the poem of the same name by Slovenian poet Dragotin Kette, whose images of somber states of the soul have inspired the choreographer in