Solo For Two Voices

Magdalena Reiter, Milan Tomášik, Anja Golob

Choreography and dance: Magdalena Reiter and Milan Tomášik

Dramaturgy: Anja Golob

Music: Alen Sinkauz and Nenad Sinkauz

Costume design: Alan Hranitelj

Produced by: Mirabelka Institute

Co-produced by: Cankarjev dom, Dance Theatre Ljubljana

Partners: Mediterranean Dance Center, Stara gara

Photography: Uroš Abram

The performance is co-financed by the City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture.

Premiere: 20th November 2017, Cankarjev dom

Letter of Testimony [Carta de Creencia] holds a special place in poetic oeuvre of the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz (1914–1998). It namely epitomizes classical traits of his poetic expression, while also being possibly the author’s best known poem.

The staged translation from poetic into dance language, named Solo for Two Voices, is our interpretation of the masterpiece, willfully entrenched in the here-and-now, yet formally maintaining a structure of distinctly divided parts according to a musical score (cantata, code). Our aim was to establish a clear, precise stage language with the ability of holding an open dialog with the text; at the same time we have been examining, throughout the working process, into what form of co-existence the two poetics of dance meeting on stage for the first time might evolve.

Paz’s poem, from the very beginning, shatters coordinates of space and time, and then goes on to – gradually and cutting through many layers – open the particular intimate relationship, on which we embark, to the ontology of love which is impossible to grasp by (mere) comprehension of togetherness of two. In this furiously disturbed world empty of meaning in which we live, it also insistently reminds us to keep asking ourselves this: what is trully essential.