Dance performance HEY, HAY! /Zdravo seno! brings the spontaneity of nature (which in itself
knows no meaning of national borders) into the space of theater. Through the poetics of folklore, rituals, customs, and live habits mixed with live electronic music the performers explore common roots, understanding and imagination of rural life as well as dismantle the idyllic, romantic idea of nature. In an unusual intersection of the rural and the artistic, their multifaceted encounter will take place, where dance will be recognised as work and the
countryside as performative potential.

Concept, Choreography & Performance: Anna Possarnig & Jerca Rožnik Novak
Live music: Marko Sulz & Martin Unterlechner
Light design and scenography: Max Windisch–Spoerk
Costume design: Pia Gorišek
Dramaturgy: Zala Dobovšek
Outside eye: Kamil Mrozowski
Production: Flota, zavod, Murska Sobota, Flota, Ljubljana 
Co- Production:  Bunker, Ljubljana 
Leaflet design: Enya Belak 
Partners: PUC, SKICA, a-ZONE, CCB, Mediterranean Dance Center San Vincenti

Supported by: Ministry of Culture RS, Municipality of Ljubljana, Land Kärnten/Kultur 
Thanks to: beat1060, Christina Böhm, Felix the cat, Marika Balode-Haderlap & Zdravko Haderlap, Iztok Novak, Kunstraum Nestroyhof, tanz_house, Fred Giroudot, Simon Wetzel, Juš Rožnik Novak, Grandma Olga & Grandma Mimi

The show includes hay bales.

ANNA POSSARNIG
Anna Possarnig (*1987, AUT) studied stage dance and dance pedagogy at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz. She has worked with numerous companies and choreographers such as Liz King/D.ID, Gisela Heredia/Tanzcoop, Bianca Braunesberger/Cie. Tauschfühlung and Sophia Hörmann, Lorena Randi and Nicolas Paul. She works internationally as a dancer, choreographer and teacher and is a founding member of Pop-Up Collective (PUC) together with Amir A. Ahmadi and Maria Shurkhal and the Lazuz association with her colleague Gat Goodovitch. Since 2017 she has mainly realized her own projects and choreographic works. Among other things, a full-length solo “Annefrank” as part of the Pelzverkehr Festival in Klagenfurt and others. She lives and works in Vienna.

JERCA ROŽNIK NOVAK
Jerca Rožnik Novak (*1992, SLO) born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Jerca Rožnik Novak studied at the Academy of Contemporary Dance Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, Austria where she graduated with a master’s degree in dance pedagogy. She has worked as a freelance dancer with choreographers such as Willi Dorner, Rose Breuss, Gisela Elisa Heredia, Anna Gulyás, Maria Koliopouplou, Matjaž Farič, Enya Belak, Johannes Wieland, Vita Osojnik, Johannes Randolf and Damian Cortes Alberti, Andreja Podrzavnik. She was part of the production “L’Italiana in Algeri'' for Tiroler Festspiele Erl. She collaborated with Pop-Up Collective (PUC). She has been working with SILK Fluegge since 2014, like ways with editta braun company. As a teacher she was teaching at High School for contemporary dance in Ljubljana- SVŠGUGL. As a guest teacher she is teaching at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, Austria. In the production of Dance theater Ljubljana she created three dance performances- Hweol in the whirlwind of time, 2GETHER/AL(L)ONE and Fear(ful)less. In production of ZAVOD Flota she created a performance called BLUFF together with Enya Belak and Veronika Valdes. She lives and works between Ljubljana, Vienna and Linz.

MARKO SULZ
Marko Sulz (*1986, A) , born in Innsbruck is a music producer and sound designer. After studying classical double bass, he switched to the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences to study multimedia art, where he continued to develop his sound on the computer. He graduated with a master's degree in 2015. Since then he has been playing as a live performer with analogue synthesizers and music software in AV, dance and improvisation performances.
In his work, he attempts to create new auditory landscapes in an experiment, without subordinating himself to any genre-typical boundaries. He is also active in the field of experimental film, where he works with the filmmaker Stefanie Weberhofer to add music to hand-edited analog films. The films have been shown at several international film festivals (including Diagonale Graz, Filmfest Dresden, Int. Film Festival Edinburgh, Ann Arbor Film Festival, EXis Seoul, Viennale Vienna). will. He also teaches electronic music at the Musikum Salzburg and works as an audio technician for the Salzburg Festival and the Jungle Theater in Vienna, among others.
For the performance Hey,Hay!/Zdravo, seno! he creates the music with Martin Unterlechner. In the extensive improvisation, moody atmospheres, sounds of sequenced modular synthesis and concrete-organic beats come together to form a powerful unit.

MARTIN UNTERLECHNER
Martin Unterlechner (*1982, A) born in Innsbruck, studied in Salzburg at the University of Applied Sciences for Multimedia Arts and successfully completed it in 2008. Even then, his special interest and focus of his work was in the field of sound design and tonal design.
Under the stage name "Mosch" he appears as a producer of electronic music in the field of leftfield/abstract beats and has released several albums on the self-founded label Duzz Down San, which has been an integral part of the Austrian independent and DIY scene since 2008. In an article, Gap Magazine even named it “Austria’s most exciting label for everything to do with hip-hop and related electronics.”

MAX WINDISCH-SPOERK
Max Windisch-Spoerk (*1996, A/ITA) is a trained event technician and studies psychology at the University of Vienna. As a freelance artist, he works as a light and sound designer and as a musician in collaboration with numerous artists and institutions (Burgtheater, Schauspielhaus Vienna, Dschungel Theater Wien, Impulstanz, and many more...). In his own work he combines these media in installation works that explore the nature of our perception and the definition of reality.

PIA GORIŠEK
Pia Gorišek (*1995, SLO) is a fashion and costume designer.
She graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Textile and Fashion Design. Her project "Refugees" was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London. Throughout her studies she participate in all Ljubljana Fashion Week and in 2015 received the award for best collection. While studying at Spanish design school EASD Valencia she participated in the children's fashion fair and show FIMI in Madrid.
After studying she started her brand "piagorisek" which was presented in Ljubljana Fashion Week and other fashion shows in Slovenia and got a costume assistant position on one of the largest Slovenian shows "Znan obraz ima svoj glas". Later she worked on multiple Slovenian and foreign feature movies and tv shows. As a costume designer, she worked on everything from commercials for well-known brands to short films and theater.

ZALA DOBOVŠEK
Zala Dobovšek (*1983, SLO) is a dramaturge, theatreologist and assistant professor of dramaturgy and performing arts at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT). She graduated from AGRFT with a degree in dramaturgy. She studied at the Theatre Academy DAMU in Prague (Divadelní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze). In 2019, she received her PhD from AGRFT (Department of Dramaturgy and Performing Arts) with the dissertation 'Theatre and War: Fundamental Relations between Performing Arts and the Wars on the Territory of Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s'. She is the current president of the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia. She works as a dramaturg, theater reviewer, critical writing mentor and pedagogue.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The project is a collaboration between Slovenian and Austrian artists (choreographers, dancers, light designer, costume designer, dramaturg and musicians). Embracing the idea of the common geographical roots, cultural cross and the similarities of the shared space across national borders (Austria/Carinthia - Slovenia), we dive into childhood memories and collective consciousness to uncover myths around the “land”. In the past the whole rural life evolved around the change of seasons and the work on/with the land. Nowadays we take the soil we put our foot down on for granted. We forget about the care and the draining hours spent to make nature nurture us and instead we consume faster than we can plant. The exposure of rural “kitch”. We go “bio”, we go “eko”, we go “all natural'', we buy “bio”, but do we really? We think we control nature but we deeply depend on it. People need to be nourished, with all kinds of food produced, in one way or another extracted from natural resources, from close by to faraway places.

Land nurtures us in physical, spiritual and social ways and brings us wealth, so humans decided to own it. But, land as an entity cannot be owned, it can only be shared.

One of the objectives is audience development in rural areas. Landscape, fields, nature put the concept in context. Bringing dance to fields, nature, parks, forests enables us to connect to local people, to reach the potential new audience. Secondly, current environmental challenges. The third objective is communication between people (land can be something that is separating the people, but even more, something that can connect). In conclusion, bringing people closer together, to nature (literal nature and their own) and to contemporary dance. The context of the performance creates the performance itself. In collaboration with our families, with local people and organizations, we look forward to developing a performance everyone can feel a part of.

The performance has two formats. An outdoor one and indoor one. This ensures us the possibility to reach a variety of people. We do not target established theaters and big venues, our goal is to take the piece to easily accessible community spaces. Rather than creating an artificial landscape we aim to perform the piece in a relevant situation (e.g. in nature). Therefore we will collaborate with local structures and networks.
We are aiming to perform in places like National park Barje in Slovenia, parks all around Austria and Slovenia, a-ZONE, Železna Kapla, Jezersko, etc.

The indoor version clearly represents the connection between nature and modern life. Placing and bringing nature to indoor stages, gallery spaces and buildings (in Ljubljana at Stara mestna elektrarna, Fire stations; …) underlines the fact that nature is present in everything we do. Nature is present in all human action, because human actions take place in nature, and themselves belong to nature. So bringing elements of nature to the indoor spaces points out the irony of the industrial world and consuming- development of the human race away from nature, where it in its origin belongs. Maybe it is time to pause for a moment and critically reflect on the intellectual repertoires and images of nature that traditionally have been used by conservationists and policymakers; to pause and carefully listen to the diversity of narratives, images and views pertaining to nature that modern society displays, and investigate which of these may be helpful in positively engaging citizens, both on the individual and community level.

ARTISTIC INTEREST
One of our points of departure is also the idea that dance is work. As much as the work ni on the farm, on fields and in nature is. We want to share it as a joint activity with the audience. Therefore, bringing dance/ work into a working environment (farm, on fields and nature). Farmers working the land and earning a living off of it incorporate and experience nature as a production factor. The idealization of the landscape is a modern invention, before that the land was just pure work and survival.
Two bales of hay and two shovels and two heavy, black work rubber pairs of boots are used as stage equipment and props. Furthermore, the costume is used to transform the characters, a silhouette of national costume/narodna noša/dirndl. A mixture of the past and the future in different layers, creating elaboration.

The artistic interest lies in how these elements can create new forms together through precision and modification, and how humor and exaggeration (but without wanting to make something ridiculous) can be used to develop an understanding of the concept of the performance. And how can the material everyone can recognise in their daily life bring contemporary dance closer to the audience.
How can we use hay to transform the landscape/the stage and create different pictures.