FORMS OF DISTANCE (2016)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Performed and created by: Lada Petrovski Ternovšek, Magdalena Reiter, Beno Novak / Leon Marič
Music: Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar
Dramaturgy: Andreja Kopač
Assistant choreography: Lada Petrovski Ternovšek
Video editing: Miloš Kalusek
Photography: Darja Štravs Tisu
Production: Zavod Mirabelka
Coproduction: DW7
Premiere: 12.02.2016, Španski borci, Ljubljana
Forms of distance explore states of detachment, abandonment, individual and collective distances. The question of alienation and absence of presence as the inherent state of contemporary man, opposes hope, searching for belonging and ceaseless attempts of building the present moment.
The mechanism of memory determines incomplete pictures, images that arrive and disappear like the past fragments of oneself. Relationships of replacements, substitutions or projections of/on another are filling the cracks in the fragmented time, suspended between the past, present and future.Time and event are split, the individual becomes a stranger in his own environment. Theatre – as nobody’s and at the same time everybody’s space – always a new form of distance. which is being co-created by the viewer and performer.
TRANSLAND (2011)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Created and performed by: Katja Legin, Magdalena Reiter
Dramaturgy: Andreja Kopač
Costume desing: Alan Hranitelj
Photography: Luka Kaše
Produced by: Stara Gara
Premiere: 03.09.2013, Španski Borci, Ljubljana
Excerpts from reviews:
In the chorographic game with the metamorphosis they are constantly escaping labeling, disbodying the form of dance and re-composing it again. They even escape their own bodies, or it escapes them, but eventually it weaves into a new content. The performance is not pretentious. It is made with an awareness that the choreography, since it’s itself a kind of writing, can’t escape labeling and organizing. And it’s not even its’ purpose. This was already achieved with an intense mixture of affections in the landscape of the performance, which have been constantly formed, transformed and deformed.
RADIO ŠTUDENT, Pia Brezavšček, 06.09.2011
The non-form in Transland is the introduction of solos. Again, not because of the phenomenality of movement or far-reached problematics of an individual expression (“What is there to express?”), but their embodiment can be understood as an affirmation of the new concept, which is clear and articulated (…). It is necessary to highlight a remarkable moment of disintegration of corporeality in Transland: the head falls backwards, eyes that look and investigate from the face, are no longer there. This false face is all just the content that floats in potentiality, moment that opens up the body and amputates the face into independent life, underlines the concept of integrity, which the body should yet to be – identity – form.
DNEVNIK, 05.09.2011, Ana Schnabl
MODUS VIVENDI (2010)
Choreography and dance: Magdalena Reiter
Dramaturgy: Janez Burger
Photography: Luka Kaše
Prodcution: Jožko Rutar, Stara Gara
Premiere: 23.01.2010, Španski Borci, Ljubljana
Modus vivendi researches the spaces of lapse of continuous ego, where the precipices of not-to-be are opening.
The dance sequences of Magdalena Reiter are wanting to escape from the schizophrenic feeling to the rescue in movement. After Badiou the dance wants to snatch away from itself. That’s why dance is an escape from oneself, just like thought is. Therefore it’s true inversion like in Descartes: I think, so I don’t exist. I dance: I don’t exist. At the same time this escape from oneself, this to-be- in-movement, is simptomatic for modern era.
The acknowledgement of schizophrenic nature of dance itself is also a moment of a new renaissance. The end of the performance does truly bring a symbolic catharsis. It seems that this is a new birth, which can really live in an eternal modus vivendi, a compromise of opposites, which will not be just temporary, but will in fact be a way of living.
RADIO ŠTUDENT, 27.01.2010, Pia Brezavšček
Modus vivendi is a mature theatre work, which is communicative on the level of content and choreography. Its’ dramaturgy is meaningful with the constant rhythm changes. The piece is scenically agitated and the performing itself is sovereign and precise, and constantly urges the audience into reflection.
VAL 202, 24.01.2010 Petra Tanko
SOLO (2005)
Choreography and dance: Magdalena Reiter
Dramaturgy: Janez Burger
Music: Tomaž Grom
Light design: Jaka Šimenc
Costume design: Alan Hranitelj
Set design: Janez Burger, Jaka Šimenc
Photography: Žiga Koritnik
Produced by: Jožko Rutar, Stara Gara
Premiere: 04.11.2005, Old Electric Plant Station, Ljubljana
Excerpts from reviews:
Magdalena Reiter proved that it is not for no reason why she is considered to be one of the most promising dancers and choreographers of Polish young generation. She combined perfection of movement with text and video projections in order to reveal our daily fears, wishes and dreams (…). As far as I am concerned, the star of this year’s festival was undisputedly Magdalena Reiter.
GŁOS WIELKOPOLSKI, 28.06.2006, Karolina Matysik
(…)imaginative choreography and an excellent performance of the authoress. The half an hour’s solo of Magdalena Reiter is a well structured, thematicly well concidered and exquisitly performed piece.
DELO, 09.11.2005, Mojca Kumerdej
Solo uses only a tiny fragment from the Carroll’s work, but the spirit of the small piece of The Wonderland spreads in a specific way over the rest of this intimate – confession dance landscape (…) warmy and honestly, as the entire Solo is. In this work she has not only confronted with herself, but has also proven the elaboration of her authorial research – in the concept itself as well as in the fully connected component parts of the performance.
DELO – POLET, 10.11.2005, Ana Perne
The fear of loneliness on stage, of singing, questioning the purpose, the meaning of creating are the components driving the performance. The screens are “Alice’s”, on them Magdalena Reiter takes parts of (split) ironic authocensor. They spread irony and cut into the body, under the skin(…) As far as appearances go it’s a simple, full performance, which is not looking for shortcuts and simplifications. Its’ power is not meant to please, merely to sacrifice, it is not requesting the approval, understanding, it is ot looking for elevating “the arts”. Honestly, wittily, structuralized and bravely it is exposing and giving itlself for survey.
DNEVNIK, 10.11.2005, Jedrt Jež Furlan
MOMENT – a study of suspended time (2004)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Created and peformed by: Mateja Rebolj, Barbara Kukovec, Ivan Peternelj, Ravil Sultanov, Magdalena Reiter
Set design: Vadim Fiškin
Sound design: Janez Burger, Boštjan Kačičnik
Costumes: Aleksandra Gregl
Light design: Miran Šušteršič
Produced by: Exodos, Stara Gara
Coproduced by: Transdance, Biennale de la danse de Lyon, Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana
Premiere: 16.09.2004, Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana
Excerpts from reviews:
An essay with a complete metaphore.
An outstanding performance is distinguished by a considerate structure, excellent performing and complexity which enables plurality of metaphores. In the presence of a precise concept the above mentioned things are not diffused, but despite various possibilities of interpretations they are combined in an efficient circumference within which the stage event unfolds. Magdalena Reiter once again presents herself as a precise and imaginative choreographer who superbly combines movement structures with the content.
beside the usual ”black box” there is a huge black sphere, through which the space is constantly redefined. Because of the corners it can not unite with it, also because it is ontologically composed in the structure of events (…) The ball is never only the Sun or the World, but also (simply) a burden, which is possible to trumphantly submit but only for a short instant. It concerns the second part of the title – the moment of liberation which, if we borrow from Sartre, turns into an unbearable weight of complete freedom when one finds himself alone, utterly responsible for himself and his actions. And there is nothing else, as fantasically shows the last scene of the performance, then to lay your back under the weight of the World and go on. And so on the circumference of the complete metaphor of Moment.
VEČER, 20.09.2004, Anja Golob
(…) in front of the spectator range various articulations of the ”moment” which, with the help of considerate sound and light design, shape a universe of excellent moving pictures .A universe where ,as in a post-catastrophic state, various worlds are found, which, despite their diveristy, form links in a uncomprehandable expenditure of a suspended time. The dance, caught in a moment of creation (…) gives an excessive treat, when it transfers the spectator into a movement visualization of time in an unplacable cosmos, which in the performance itself functions on all the levels (movement, performance, concept).
DNEVNIK, 20.09.2004, Katja Praznik
FORMA INTERROGATIVA (2003)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Danced and created by: Magdalena Reiter, Mateja Rebolj
Costumes: Aleksandra Gregl
Light design: Miran Šušteršič
Production: MASKA
Premiere: 23.01.2003, PTL, Ljubljana
Excerpts from reviews:
Very beautiful was the Forma Interrogativa a collaboration between the Polish choreographer and dancer Magda Reiter and Mateja Rebolj, a former prima ballerina of the Slovenian cultural scene. It forms an extraordinary interesting starting point: a young choreographer meets a prominent ballerina and dancer, and together they decide to examine the medium “dance”. Forma Interrogativa is built from a number of questions concerning the problematic nature of the medium “dance”. The performance starts as a hesitation. It is as if both dancers do not know how to begin: the music starts but a moment later it stops. A false start. Both dancers, two generations, are looking for a movement but cannot find it. Shortly after, they are dancing, but in the dark.. The stage is lighted by about ten beams of light and Robolj succeeds in dancing through the beams. Reiter looks at her. She stands still in a beam. Forma Interrogativa is a performance, in which the artists are very powerful and no evidence remains.
DE MORGEN, 11.11.2003, Tom Rummens
Magdalena Reiter and Mateja Rebolj physically went looking for each other and the dance. Initially there was their clumsy shuffle on the prepodium, but soon it became an interesting choreography for two individuals with a difficult mutual relationship. The story filtered through by pieces. Somebody is on its way to someone else. But who and why? And what has the murderer got to do with it? Or is it all but a dream? Forma Interrogativa leaves a big question. But it is a question that itches, that you take with you when you leave the hall, in order to taste it at ease later.
Elke Van Campenhout
Young Polish choreographer Magdalena Reiter(…) had met with Mateja Rebolj in the choreography Forma interrogativa, where Rebolj also co-created the choreography. Extremely interesting combination of those two artists of different generations and dance experiences is put in the project. Questioning through dance,which starts with minimalistic, stylized, everyday movements on the spot, is concentrated on the relation between readiness and uncertainty, between experience and learning.(…)
The choreography exceeds asking question only in the dance media and it’s possible to understand the dance sequances broader, as a question about individual identity in a dialogue with another person. Forma interrogativa(…) containes very interesting parts, choreographically as well as performing wise, where movement goes from explosivness to exceptional sensibility. Excellent performing.
DELO, 29.01.2003, Mojca Kumerdej
The dancer and choreographer, Magdalena Reiter her concept about opposites who attract and fulfill each other, but most of all mutually creativly stumulate, had in an extremly interesting way presented as a contrast of her own youthful power and dispersed fervour, and experience and stability of her mature co-dancer.
Mateja Rebolj, an excellent perfomer, is also an actress with a discreet but penetrating mimicry and explicit gesticulation. Both performers had confronted each other on sage equally and had presented the power of dance in different, fine shades.
VEČER, 03.02.2003, Daliborka Podboj
ATTENTION (2002)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Created and danced by: Katarzyna Chmielewska, Radek Hewelt / Leszek Bzdyl, Magdalena Reiter
Music: Bart Aga
Light design: Thomas Walgrave
Costumes: An d`Huys
Production: WERKHUIS/producties (Rosas vzw)
Premiere: 15.03.2002, Beursschouwburg Bis, Brussels
Excerpts from reviews:
Attention brought the house down. The work of the trio team seized imagination and attention. In the choreography there was no place for any unnecessary movement. Bzdyl, Chmielewska and Reiter new exactly what they want to achive.
GŁOS WYBRZEŻA, 05.09.2002, Katarzyna Gruszczyńska
ALL THESE APROPOS (2000)
Choreography: Magdalena Reiter
Danced and created by: Katarzyna Chmielewska and Magdalena Reiter
Premiere: 13.07.2000, PARTS, Brussels
The project was created in frame of X-group – a project for young dancers and choreographers, initative of PARTS and Brussels 2000
Excerpts from reviews:
Katarzyna Chmielewska and Magdalena Reiter shine in an austere work dedicated to Samuel Beckett’s Enough. Both dancers breathe the fluid eroticism of the text into the microphone and fill it with movement, exuding an atmosphere of a still, peaceful Zen garden.
BALLET INTERNATIONAL/ TANZ AKTUELL, (issue 10, October 2000), Arndt Wesemann
A body awakens – Magdalena Reiter is Poland’s best female contemporary dancer. Her movements are beautifully elegant, without artificial mannerism-precise, powerful and demanding. Every move from this natural born dancer comes from within, is never pathetic, never destructive. True eloquent expression.
THE WARSAW VOICE, 12.05.2002, Lorne Carl Liesenfeld
MAGDALENA REITER 