It may be that the very projects we represent were the first to unite the traditions of West Africa and the Balkan Roma or Balkan gypsy music and flamenco, spiced up with jazz and contemporary sounds.

Inspiral is designed as a collaborative platform that includes production, organization and promotion, using music as a medium for spreading the idea of freedom and love as well as realizing the concept of “world happiness.

We operate as an independent promoter – a presentation platform, a new form of music publishing, using modern media and fresh approaches to the distribution and publishing of music and other artworks.

You can contact us on info@inspiral.si

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A project for promoting African culture with active participation of immigrants and their children in free education in the field of performing arts and in the organisation of the Baofest Festival.

The Expressive World of African Culture project, organised by the Baobab cultural society with funding from the European Social Fund and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, systematically educates and trains African immigrants and other interested individuals in various performing arts forms and culture professions throughout the year. The acquired knowledge will be put into practice in October 2010 within the organisation of the Baofest Festival – as performers, choreographers, mentors and organisers.

The training covers music, dance, video and theatre workshops and the basics of event organisation. The target groups for both projects, the Expressive World of African Culture (Izrazni svet afriške kulture – ISAK) and the International Festival of African Culture, Baofest, include African immigrants, their children, professional and lay publics, as well as the young, the adult and the disabled.

Both projects, ISAK and Baofest contribute to cultural diversity of the Slovenian space.

Cultural heritage of African dance and rhythm is present in all countries on the old and new continents and is passed on form generation to generation. Dance, song and drums accompany all significant events in life: birth, baptism, circumcision, marriage, etc. and as such, address the cultural identity of the immigrant and the cultural identity awareness of the wider community, thereby enabling members of these vulnerable social groups inclusion in the wider community.

You can find more about the project and current educational programe on ISAK website.

More: WWW.ISAK.SI

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My better half?

Author: Maša Kagao Knez

Choreography & dance: Nestor Kouame & Maša Kagao Knez

Music score by: Igor Leonardi

Musicians : Blaž Korez & Damir Mazrek

Production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana

Premiere : 10th of June  – PTL, Ljubljana

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The dancers and musicians are searching for their own purpose in space through a jiggsaw puzzle of african and contemporary elements in movement and music.

Choreographer :
Maša Kagao Knez

Dancers and co-creators of the performance:
Dalanda Diallo, Malin Wiskari, Maša Kagao Knez

Musicians and music arrangement:
Lisa Ladberg, Blaž Korez, Issiaka Sanou

Music by:
Lisa Ladberg

Co-production:
KUD BAOBAB IN DRUŠTVO AFRIŠKI CENTER

Premiere:
29. avgust 2009, Festival Varldens, Eskilstuna, Sweden

Slovenian premiere:
12. november 2009, Plesni Teater Ljubljana

About performance

“Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying. A man’s identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows but the way in which he is united with them.”
Robert Terwilliger

The post MOI, TOI, NOUS / JAG, DU, VI / JAZ, TI, MI appeared first on Baobab.

Choreographer:
Maša Kagao Knez

Dancers and co-creators:
Rosana Hribar, Jana Menger, Kristina Pojbič Champaigne, Joseph Bunn

Original music score:
Nino de Gleria

Set designer:
Danilo Pečar

Costume designer:
Katja Komljanec Koritnik

Dramaturge:
Kim Komljanec

Production:
Maša Kagao Knez & KUD Baobab

Coproduction:
Zavod En- Knap

This production was supported by Department for Culture of MOL (Municipality of Ljubljana).

Opening night: 30. marec 2011 ob 20h, Center kulture Španski borci, Ljubljana

About performance

The performance Placed Maša Kagao Knez continues to explore her own and general human existence and co-existence. Her exploration of human relations in a society started with her choreographic debut Missawa (2004) and was continued in the performance Moja boljša polovica [My Better Half ] (2007) where she focused on the dance and life duet between a man and a woman. In the performance Moi toi nous/Jag du vi/ Jaz ti mi [Me You Us] (2009) she looked at the relationship between and individual and a group, whereas her dance solo called Rojena zunaj svoje vasi [Born Outside My Village] (2010, choreography by Rosana Hribar) was a study of her place in a culture she does not belong to, though she was born into it.

This time, in the performance Placed, Maša Kagao Knez is approaching the theme of human existence and coexistence from a less tangible point of view: How do we react, feel or act together and as individuals? How do we influence each other? What do we strive for and why in this existence of ours? Are we all alike in all this and/or how do we differ? Placed is an attempt to transfer all these emotions and questions into the stage language of dance, which is, due to its arbitrary and ever-changing nature, impossible to pin down. It is like the Sanskrit word avidya meaning on one hand something as wide as “ignorance” and on the other something much more defined such as “mistaking the ephemeral for the eternal”. So, how and how much can an artist express their observations, opinions and feelings through dance? And what is the form and level to which these reach another human being at all?

Placed is a performance which translates the author’s observation of the existence of “the placed”, i.e. us all. Four dancers with very diverse professional backgrounds and approaches have been “placed” in the cast of Placed so that each performer’s specific expression is used as the source of creative crossroads which characterise the performance as a whole.

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Idea: Dalanda Diallo

Sankofa choir mentor: Ana Bezjak

Choreography: Maša Kagao Knez

Musicians and musical arrangement:
percussions: Damir Mazrek, Issiaka Sanou, Blaž Korez
bass guitar, bass: Thierno Diallo

Sankofa choir: Max Zimani, Ana Nyasha Zimani, Alice Camara, Michel Obenga, Tschimy Aliage Obenga, Kristian Trček Bouquet, Dalanda Diallo, Teja Kuk, Tjaša Kuk, Curtis Cole, Denise Antoinette Cole, Damaris Potočnik, Luise Toure, Ernest Boakai

Dance group Baobab: Vesna Bizjak, Tjaša Jerak, Ajda Žagar, Eva Žagar, Lea Menard, Kristina Sicherl, Asja Grauf, Sara Zaninović, Maša Kagao Knez, Dalanda Diallo

Production: KUD Baobab

READ EARTH   is a full-length performance with a choir, a band of musicians and a company of dancers. The show includes a series of harmonious tunes, earth rhythms and energy-filled dancing to create a genuine African atmosphere. This African evening is a mixture of songs from various ethnical groups from Sub-Saharan Africa, West African rhythms as well as traditional and contemporary African dance. Sankofa Choir and Baobab Dance Company have emerged from a Slovenian project ISAK (Expressive World of African Culture), run by Baobab Society. The project’s goal is to encourage the development of African culture and spread the awareness about it across Slovenia.

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Directed by, libretto and songs by:
Kim Komljanec

Choreography:
Maša Kagao Knez

Assistant choreographers:
Sebastjan Starič in Dalanda Diallo

Original music score by:
Nino De Gleria

Singing leader:
Jelena Ždrale

Scene and costumes:
Katja Komljanec Koritnik

Dramaturgy:
Marko Djukić

Make-up artist:
Sonja Murgelj

Corporate design:
Sara Zaninović

Actors, singers and dancers:
Jose, Tjaša Hrovat, Sebastjan Starič, Alenka Tetičkovič, Tadej Pišek, Lea Menard, Dušan Teropšič, Issiaka Sanou, Denise Antoinette Cole, Maša Kagao Knez, Dalanda Diallo, Irena Yebuah Tiran, Leticia Slapnik Yebuah, Daniel Feelingue

Premiere: Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana, 28.10.2011

Sunlighting is a musical about an unusual individual, an illegal immigrant from Africa. But it is also much more than that. The show contains a number of characters, illegal immigrants from all over the world and thus the message of the show becomes much broader: Sunlighting is about human rights and social exclusion, about (in-)tolerance towards anything different, about the loneliness of an individual in our society of excess and greed. The immigrants have come to Europe with only what they were wearing to work here literally day and night for a few pennies a day. They’re hoping to save themselves and their families of poverty and for this they are willing to sacrifice even their own dignity.

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A VISIT TO AN AFRICAN VILLAGE

Idea:
Jasna Knez

Choreography:
Maša Kagao Knez & Dalanda Diallo

Musical arrangement:
Damir Mazrek, Blaž Korez, Issiaka Sanou

Text:
Damir Mazrek, Dalanda Diallo, Lea Menard

The creators of performance:
Dalanda Diallo, Maša Kagao Knez, Laetitia Zinsou, Lea Menard, Issiaka Sanou, Damir Mazrek, Blaž Korez

Dancing, acting, singing, performing music:
Lea Menard, Dalanda Diallo, Leticia Slapnik Yebuah, Maša Kagao Knez, Issiaka Sanou, Blaž Korez

About performance
Two travellers embark on a fantasy journey. They arrive to an African village, where they meet the village women. They use dance and music to demonstrate their daily chores and by using drumming take them into the world of African music and its rhythms. Through dance they walk them through the laborious but fun-filled and pleasant day. As the travellers don’t speak the language of the village, they communicate through music, dance and gestures and so learn about the pulse of this African place.

The repetitions
KUD France Preseren , March 2012
Festival Baofest – September 2012
Pikin Festival, Velenje – September 2012
Theater Koper – October 2012, May 2013
Cultural centre Janez Trdina Novo mesto – January 2014
Chocolate Festival, Radovljica – April 2014
Festival Rdeči Revirji, Hrastnik – May 2014
Festival Kalejdoskop, Kranj – June 2014
Sankt. Jakob Rosenkrantz (Austria) – June 2014
Summer in Celje, Celje – July 2014

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Autor and dance:
Maša Kagao Knez

Choreography:
Rosana Hribar (Slovenija) & Filibert Tologo (Burkina Faso)

Dramaturgy:
Andreja Kopač

Produced by:
Kulturno-umetniško društvo Baobab

Co-produced by:
Plesni Teater Ljubljana

BORN OUTSIDE HER VILLAGE
Choreography and music selection: Rosana Hribar

1978.
Choreography: Filibert Tologo

ABOUT PERFORMANCE:

The African word “kagao” means “woman born outside her village”, 1978 indicates year of her birth. Maša Kagao Knez whose roots are Slovenian on her mother’s side and from Burkina Faso on her father’s is a dancer and choreographer, born and raised in Ljubljana. She has been actively involved in the Slovenian dance scene for almost two decades.
Her solo performance is based on the experience of being on the outside and not belonging anywhere, combined with the principles of dual identity. Maša involved two choreographers from different dance backgrounds in her project, Rosana Hribar and Filibert Tologo, to develop the physical dance material of one a single body – of the dancer, Maša Kagao Knez – from two different perspectives.

 FROM THE MEDIA

Choreographer Rosana Hribar has managed to sculpture an artistic image of a woman in the process of self-recognition, which was danced by and vividly shaped in her entirely new way of movement by Maša Kagao Knez.
Born Outside My Village is a completely finalized performance which makes you think, it overwhelms you, making you believe in its every move, in the entirety of its choreography which spells out biographical moments and draws an entire cultural symbolism.

PARADA PLESA Daliborka Podboj

 In this half an hour solo, choreographer Rosana Hribar precisely transferred the dancer’s spiritual and identity diaspora which opened the movement of Maša Kagao Knez in a way we have never had a chance to see before. And this difference did not show only in the dance methods used, but also in the performance: through exact exchanges and passages between tension and relaxation, stiffness and softness, confidence and insecurity or hesitation.

The half-hour solo Born Outside My Village is distinguished by its well thought-through choreography intertwining the dancer’s various movement experience: in the second part of the show modern dance techniques prevail and in the third part African dances are predominant. But the show is also marked by the precise and disciplined performance of Maša Kagao Knez showing a span of movement she had never staged before.

DELO Mojca Kumerdej

 Born Outside Her Village positions Knez in black on stage, in a battle with herself, in search for identity, marked with the African in a cold and strict Western society. During the dance voyage on stage the performance turns over to the second part, 1978, in which Knez glows in fiery colours and just as passionately and explosively controls the stage.

SIOL.NET Manca Čujež

 Next to dispersed atmosphere, to which contributes the excellent lighting design, the performance is distinguished for the performing span of Maša Kagao Knez, who at this moment is one of the top Slovenian dancers.

DELO, Mojca Kumerdej

THE PERFORMANCE REPETITIONS

2011
Born outside her village – Festival Rdeči revirji, Hrastnik
Born outside her village – Festival Lent, Maribor
Born outside her village – Festival Kluže
Born ouside her village – Dance Theater Ljubljana

2012
Born outside her village, 1978 – Festival Tjedan Afrike, Zagreb (Croatia)
Born outside her village 1978. – International summer festival Trnfest, Ljubljana
Born outside her village, 1978 – International Festival Baofest, Ljubljana

2013
Born outside her village, 1978. – Slovenian national theater, Trieste (Italy)
Born ouside her village, 1978. – Dance Theater Ljubljana

2014
Born ouside her village, 1978. – Echos danses festival, Geneva (Switzerland)

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Music:
Issiaka Sanou, Blaž Korez, Daniel Felingue, Leticia Slapnik Yebuah

Performed by:
Daniel Felingue, Maša Kagao Knez, Issiaka Sanou
and dance group Baobab:
Vesna Bizjak, Tjaša Jerak, Kristina Sicherl, Sara Zaninovič, Ajda Žagar, Eva Žagar

Production: KUD Baobab

Baobab Dance Company grew out of the project ISAK (the Slovenian acronym stands for Expressive World of African Culture), which Baobab Society has been developing since 2009 and is supported by European Social Funds and Slovenian Ministry of Culture. The aim of the Expressive World of African Culture is to spread, present and promote African culture by actively integrating first and further generation immigrants from Africa by including them in the practice of dance and music.

Within ISAK project, new dance and music projects are created each year. They are always based around the theme of linking the “African” and the “European”.

The evening of dance and music called Footsteps is a presentation of short dance pieces that members of Baobab Dance Company have developed in 2012. Dance routines have either emerged from a certain traditional West African dance or have come out of exploring one’s own dance expression based on a traditional rhythm, but they are all connected, interwoven and complementing each other.

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