AWARDS
AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE
… it was risky, it was funny, it was violent, it was excessive, it was human, it was touching, it was pop, it was intelligent, it was political, it was daring, it was a challenge.
Slovenian Dance Biennale Gibanica 2019 (Together)
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SPECIAL PRIZE BY THE AWARD COMMITTEE
... [Jurišić] has developed in the course of her creative career physical presences with which she is persistently revealing physical images that permeate the local archive repertoire.
Ksenija Hribar Award 2019 (for performance Together and participation in various projects in the last two years)
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AWARD AT THE DISCRETION OF THE JURY FOR UNIQUE PERFORMATIVE GESTURE
A powerful experience that cuts deep into one’s mind.
Maribor National Theatre Festival 2018 (Together)
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AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE OF SEASON 2017/18
... an electrifying, unpredictable dialogue that comes across as intimate, while inspiring the audience to reflect on the social implications of “being together”.
Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia (Together)
AWARD FOR PROMISING CHOREOGRAPHER
Ksenija Hribar Award 2013 (Between us, Sofa)
SPECIAL MENTION BY THE AWARD COMMITTEE
The jury would also like to specially mention one young author who has shown innovation and originality in her first work, perhaps an upcoming star of future Gibanica festival.
Slovenian Dance Biennale Gibanica 2007 (R’z’R)
ARTICLES
DURATION IN THE ARTS
Summary
If we want to talk about duration, we must talk about time. If we want to talk about performing arts, we must talk about time. But when we say time, we usually think of time that moves in a linear direction: the past, the present, the future. Duration proposes a different understanding of time. It is about a quality rather than quantity, content as opposed to a progression of points along a line. It was this attitude towards time in theatre that broke with the traditional dramatic structure of continuing advancement of time. Peformance art, happenings, and live art in the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, stressed the possibility of manipulating time as an alternative to capitalist time, and later on peformance art with a long duration directly attacked the “acceleration” of culture. If in post-dramatic theatre the time that actors and audience spend together became one of its key lasting and persistent elements, then contemporary dance, on the other hand, attacked time by changing the understanding of the body: dance no longer “glued” structures to the body but rather began to draw on content from the laws of the body itself. Thus the understanding of dance as an ephermal medium in the last twenty year has changed into reflection on a medium for which duration is of essence.
Wild west, Leja Jurišić, Dialogi 9 2015 (p. 72-84), Založba Aristej, September 2015
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PRESS
2019
De Facto (Go with Yourself) by Leja Jurišić and Milko Lazar is excellent.Rok Vevar, Independent dance critic, 13 May 2019 (De Facto - Go With Yourself)
Contemporary dance may have travelled a long way, having escaped its dependency on music and becoming autonomous, but in the case of the Lazar–Jurišić duo, it seems to enter back into relationship with music completely independently...These days, all that is needed to achieve the most powerful and most real effect, is – de facto – a reduction.
Pia Brezavšček, Dnevnik, 23 May 2019 (De Facto - Go With Yourself)
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Jurišić and Lazar boldly and intensely embody the transitions between modes of expression, roles and their own creative identities, approaches and procedures, and thus, awkwardly put, create a kind of deconstruction of the factual on a personal and broader level.
Luka T. Zagoričnik, Neodvisni, 12 June 2019 (De Facto - Go With Yourself)
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It seemed as if bodily intelligence was an animal trying to sniff andexplore this building of ballet it’s being kept in.
Samo Oleami, Trust me, I am critic, January 2019 (Angel)
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2018
INTERVIEW Leja Jurišić & Marko MandićVsak zase in vseeno skupaj, Lejla Švabič, RTV, 25 January 2018
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INTERVIEW Leja Jurišić
Ni prostora za sprenevedanje, Andrej Jaklič, Lublanske novice, 25 January 2018
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INTERVIEW Leja Jurišić & Marko Mandić
Skupno preseganje okvirov, Gregor Butala, Dnevnik, 27 January 2018
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An uncompromising comment on the pace of modern life, the pace dismantling not only “free” times, but also the foundations of their respective communities.
Zala Dobovšek, Dnevnik Newspaper, 1 February 2018 (Together)
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Together can be recognised - without a shadow of doubt - as one of the most important performing arts events staged in Slovenia in the last decade.
Nika Arhar, RTV MMC, 8 February 2018 (Together)
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2017
The dramatic moment when Leja Jurišić kicked away the chair, leaving herself, angelic-like, taped to the wall. With this work she accomplished an appropriation-transgression of Maurizio Cattelan’s “A Perfect Day” (1999) piece by performing it as an anti-masochistic escape act; arduously working her way free of the self-imposed tape trap.Joseph Nechvatal, Hyperallergic, 30 August 2017 (The Most Beautiful Moments Are The Shortest)
2015
INTERVIEW Leja JurišićKar vem jaz, ve tudi moje telo, Ana Schnabl, Dnevnik Daily, 28 April 2015
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From Laibach’s famous interview on state TV in 80s Yugoslavia, when they refused to say it was all a joke, onwards, it seems Slovenia is the home of the discomforting satire that refuses to say “We’re only joking”. Maybe not even “we’re also joking”. And I think it’s that uncanny gap that makes the stuff said work that bit harder. The not knowing exactly where you stand that makes you interrogate your own ethical responses, instead of allowing yourself to be fed comfortable piss-taking.
Andrew Haydon, Postcards from the gods, 22 March 2015 (Sofa)
The performers investigate, through a bed, the paternalistic relationships that have been bred at room temperature and carefully tended for and out of which we have not yet been able to get, even though we constantly talk about it and strive for more. Reba and Jurišić show that an occassion when someone or something takes us for granted as available subjects is in fact the rule, rather than a coincidence, it is the soundtrack of lives we live. Despite the magnitude of the issue the performative solutions are witty and relaxed – laughter was often heard in the audience – while through repetition and escalation the issue is nevertheless kept huge, unpleasant and sharp.
Ana Schnabl, Dnevnik Daily, 15 June 2015 (Ideal)
Ideal assaults the patriarchal logic of constructing a woman as a male ideal. … The peformers are re-playing a stereotypical representation of a woman and her work while at the same time subverting it, overthrowing it through a perfect absurdity of the situation. … While they start the performance with Biblical quotes on love of God and love of thy brother, they end it with a complete deconstruction of speech and enunciation.
Alja Lobnik & Robert Bobnič, Radio Študent, Slovenia, 17 June 2015 (Ideal)
A terrific Slovenian piece ... a frenetic dance coupled with a critical discourse on the very idea of a single Europe.
Rodolfo Obregón, Teatromexicano.com.mx, Mexico 2015 (Ballet Of Revolt)
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2014
ARTICLE Leja JurišićV levitacijski časovni zanki, kjer se stvari na odru ne dogajajo, ampak zgodijo, Andreja Kopač, Metodologije beleženja, 16 December 2014
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INTERVIEW Leja Jurišić & Teja Reba
Lulika je prav zvita zver, Tanja Lesničar - Pučko, Dnevnik, 4 April 2014
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This piece is a telling reminder of the potentiality of options facing every artistic practice of any epoch – and not only this, but also when the lightness of the subject choice gets denied by its very transience and romantically impregnated “inefficiency”. The performance excelled in its conceptual setup irreducible to interaction of so-called pure dance with itself or other artistic practices.
Igor Ružić, MASKA, no. 164-164, Summer 2014 (Ballet of Revolt)
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Fears and depression are not the only starters of our existence here and now; there is also the ability to play in the midst of widespread repression and the countering of it by "positive schizophrenia" as philosopher Jacques Rancière would say.
Nenad Jelesijević, MMC RTV Slovenia, 9 December 2014 (I Fear Slovenia)
Leja Jurišić is both a comment and a position embodied in one person. Her latest work, I Fear Slovenia, in co-authorship with Petra Veber, talks about her relationship to her own country, about manifest or covert messages regarding us, Slovenians, (not) being good enough, capable enough, successful enough.
Jedrt Jež Furlan, Napovednik, 14 April 2014 (I Fear Slovenia)
2013
INTERVIEW Leja Jurišić & Teja RebaSmeh je tornado, ki ruši in se pred ničemer ne ustavi, Mojca Kumerdej, DELO - Sobotna priloga, 27 July 2013
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ARTICLE Leja Jurišić & Teja Reba
Odrski umetnici, Vanja Pirc, Mladina, 15 November 2013
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Neoliberal Europe and the even more neoliberal Slovenia are undoubtedly entities worth the revolt. This is visible, audible and almost tangible in the performance »Ballet of Revolt«.
Nenad Jelesijević, Radio Študent, 25 February 2013 (Ballet of Revolt)
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Abolishing the limit between an artistic gesture and ‘life as such.’
Nenad Jelesijević, Radio Študent, 17 June 2013 (The Second Freedom)
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Today Leja Jurišić and Teja Reba form part of a milieu, composed of the most exciting Slovenian dancers of the younger generation and they are, without a doubt, the boldest of them all.
Mojca Kumerdej, DELO, 27 July 2013
One of the highlights of the U3, the 7th Triennale of contemporary Art in Slovenia.
Matevž Čelik, Nedelo, 23 June 2013 (Sofa)
2012
Jurišić is the first of her dance generation, who is weaving the theme of revolution into choreography, and she does this in a provocatively modernistic manner for our late postmodern times.Helmut Ploebst, Der Standard, Austria 2012 (Ballet of Revolt)
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2010
A decadence of figures, performed by Leja Jurišić and Teja Reba in the performance Sofa, illustrates the erosion of cultural and neoliberal Europe and the ever stronger rejection of intellectuality. A stinging performance in which each individual spectator can choose their own 'rhyme.'Helmut Ploebst, Der Standard, 4 December 2010 (Sofa)
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2009
Med nama is a refreshment for Slovene stages: it fills them with humor, imagination and reflection - all in one package. And the package is neither entertaining nor stuffy or fatalistic, it is just the right mixture of it allAna Schnabl, Dnevnik, 1 December 2009
... Leja Jurišić & Teja Reba walk a fine line between private and public, backstage and stage in this well performed play
Mojca Kumerdej, DELO, 24 November 2009
2006
Her refined staging plays with the moving potential of the body, only that in contrast with other usual attempts at its aesthetics she explores it in deformations.Radio Študent
Leja stuns me. She sighs, I sigh. An extraterrestrial, one finger nail red, she moves like no one I have seen move on stage before.
Ivana Ivković, dance and theatre critic
The first solo work of Leja Jurišić certainly proved she is one of the most promising Slovenian young choreographers at the moment.
Bojana Kunst