Aprilfools

“The most important thing for me is to understand my own body, to explore what it means to have bones, muscles, organs, senses, what the body means as far as the energy is concerened. This inner apprach, when you are not dealing with a form, but you begin from  within, from the body, when your body is understood as a language, this is what holds my interest in dance; the moves then come by themselves and are mainly abstract; they are not an imitation, but a new language which originates in the nature of body.”
Valentina Čabro

Valentina Čabro is a dancer and choreographer, but above all a being who wonders about her existence, striking ideas of nature and the fact that everything there is, is there. She was born in 1971, in Bugojno. Before she had really become aware of it, she started dancing. She spent her childhood in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Germany, and her school years at acadamies in Essen, Montpellier, Hamburg and Rotterdam. School teaches technique, although options and ways of moving are enabled by the body. Valentina began to explore the ability of her own body, and her first choreography came to light: Les couleurs perdus du temps des anciens soleils, Žubor rijeke and Pupa – a childish expression of pain. In 1996 she came to Slovenia – she danced, enchanted and stayed. In 1998 she concieved and performed a solo performance, Exah, at Ljubljana Dance Theatre for which she received an award for the best show at the PUF international festival. The main character in the story is a witch, a woman who experiences the world from an intimate connection with nature and therefore does not conform to social norms. In the same year she performed G.U.I.D. - Summer and Autumn, the first part of a cycle on the four seasons, which is a story of excursions into nature and the human experience of place and time which, in spite of its seemingly cyclical nature, never returns to the same point. 
In the context of four seasons she also created this new choreography, Motovilke (Aprilfools) – Spring. In the confusion of April weather, leaves from last autumn and penetrating new life, three dancers try to remember what this is all about. What the trust of this stubborn growth is, this mad desire to develop and move is, when it would have been much easier to sit in one place and do nothing.
“The human body has kept the memory of evolution. Forms, functions, energy and matter. You don’t have to pretend you are a stone or behave like an animal to be able to remember. You remember why evolution developed the extremities – the senses, organs, nervous system, everything a being needs to move, to survive. Body memory is surprising. It can make you laugh, or make you think. You discover abilities that you have gained in the process of evolution. I trust this memory, and follow it. This is the source of my movement, my favourite and most exciting experience in dancing.”
In search of a primeval connection with nature the choreographer removes the boundaries between the macro and micro cosmos. With the elimination of human functions she sets out for the zero level of evolution where, from the inability of the body and uncharted space, their mutual redefinition begins. From apparently inarticulate, clumsy movements there arises a structure which reciprocally positions them, gives them direction and context, or leaves them to twist and turn senselessly into absurd destinations. They can be ants, stunted branches of evolution, they can be some mucilaginous slime boiling in a primordial soup, still unnamed and with no cell membrane; it doesn’t matter, what matters is that it moves and goes on, though it does not lead anywhere. New/old movement abilities are revealed, nothing comes sooner or later, nothing is more or less functional; what a scientist would perceive as chaos, we will call pleasure. Pleasure in Movement.

Concept and choreography: Valentina Čabro; conceived and performed by: Rebecca Murgi, Sabina Potočki, Susanne Judson; composer: Tomaž Grom; video: Valentina Čabro; light design: Miran Šuštaršič; costum design: Jasmina Ferček; Mateja Kumar; constructor of the swing and videotable: Igor Rižnar; Samo Jurečič; production: E.P.I. Center; coproduction: Centro di Ricerca per il Teatro Milano; financialy supported by: Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, MOL - oddelek za kulturo, Zavod za odprto družbo Slovenija, Junge Hunde, Kanonenhallen Kopenhagen.