The Third Front
We are glad to be able to present to you the third edition of the Front Festival, while our endeavours are already directed towards the future.
The ideas meeting at our Festival have been responsible for setting up an international network of Beyond Front Dance Explorations, expanding part of our programme throughout the year and covering a wider area between Ljubljana, Budapest, Zagreb and Vienna. The Front Festival is thus becoming a demonstration of annual activities of partners within the network and a cross-section of dance events in the Central Europe. In addition to outward expansion, special attention is paid to placing the Festival in the town of Murska Sobota and its wider area, which are highlighted with the Festival's cultural and artistic events. The year 2012, the focus of our vision, when Maribor, together with Murska Sobota, will be the European Capital of Culture, fills us with special zeal and expectations, while at the same time demanding from us additional efforts to meet the aims of the Festival and the network operating in close relationship with the activities open up into the European space, and with the Festival events in the city.
The Third Front provides a good insight into the rich variety of contemporary dance creation today. Despite the varied character of the authors' poetic expressions, the common denominator of all performances remains to be the body and its movement, which in the invited performances prevails over the conceptually immovable and bodyless trends.
This year's Front will start with a highly animated performance “Premiera” (“The Opening Night”), presented by five excellent Slovakian dancers, and will continue with an uncompromising and distinctly erotic aesthetics of the Hungarian choreographer Pal Frenak in his performance "Instinkt” (“The Instinct”). Half-way through the Festival, the Front will hold up a mirror to the world made banal by the mass media with the performance staged by the Austrian choreographer Chris Haring, titled “Projekt poziranja B” (“The B Project of Posing”), then it will move towards the sea in the performance “Modulacija” (“Modulation”) by the Croatian choreographer Marija Ščekić, and present an ironic view of the ethno and dance in the “Koncert za Brezdelniča in Zgubidančiča” (“The Concert for an Idler and a Loafer”) by the Croatian choreographer and dancer Rajko Pavlić. The Front will move towards its conclusion with the energetic international structure of the En Knap Group in the performance “Nekje vmes” (“Somewhere In-between”) and mark the end of the Festival with the unpredictable “Improvizacijski napad” (“Improvisation Attack”) by the musician and composer Milko Lazar and a numerous international dance ensemble.
The Front will be rounded off by the accompanying programme, integrating the Festival into the international network, consolidating the theoretical foundations, providing for dissemination of knowledge and bringing the Festival even closer to the people in the town Square of Culture.
The politicians have proclaimed this year to be the year of intercultural dialogue, therefore I will conclude this writing with the following invitation: Dance is the language of intercultural dialogue. So Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for a crucial step …
Artistic Director of the Festival
Matjaž Farič
