My decision for creating in the medium of contemporary dance is connected with a possibility to construct a dance idiom, to explore and articulate it. What I am particularly interested in is entering a process, which does not anticipate the final result. I never perceived dance language as a mere result, bound to a certain project, performance, but rather a fruit of continual research and examination of the limits and borders of the medium itself. I always search for points of support in dance language, or better, I test the limits of a certain expression. The field of contemporary dance thus presents to me a continual challenge, as it allows not only the examination of the medium but the questioning of me as an individual as well. (Maja Delak)
Maja Delak is a choreographer, dancer, performer and pedagogue. She studied contemporary dance at CNDC L'Esquisse in Angers, France, and at numerous dance seminars, lead by internationally renowned pedagogues. She was, from 1993 to 2002, a member of the international dance group En-Knap, and a programme leader of the realization of a high school programme for contemporary dance, provided for at the Pre-School Education and Grammar School Ljubljana, where she teaches. In her choreographic opus, Maja Delak has traversed numerous worlds, which – despite the different themes and approaches to work – whirl into an anchorage of the author's dance poetics, with which she is making a clearer and clearer definition of the methodologies of contemporary art and dance. In 2006, Maja Delak established institute Emanat, with which she aims for the affirmation of contemporary dance – both with performance production as well as with a book programme (Transitions series) and education (Agon).
Performances
2018 Just for today
2015 Wanda & Nova deViator: ARP 339 (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2014 Encounter (co-author: Annie Abrahams)
2014 In Another Place (Conservatory Duncan Center Prague and SVŠGL)
2013 What If
2013 Transmittance #2.5 (co-author: Luka Prinčič and other collaborators)
2013 Image Snatchers (collective authorship)
2012 Transmittance #2.1 (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2011 Shame
2011 Transmittance #1, #1.5, #2 (co-authors: Luka Prinčič and other collaborators of different situations)
2011 Sublimation Revision (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2010 Transmittance #0 (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2010 Dirty Dozen (collaboration at Body Lab in Berlin)
2010 Beside-ness (for 4th year of Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten)
2010 Wanda & Nova deViator: Frozen Images (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2009 Monster Tamer
2009 Une façon d`aimer / Ways of Love (co-author: Luka Prinčič)
2008 Serata Artistica Giovanile
2007 Expensive Darlings
2007 Rodeo (co-author: Mauricio Ferlin)
2006 Flogging the Dead Horse (for 3rd year of Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten)
2005 Gallery of Dead Women - Hommage a Hamletmachine (co-author: Mala Kline)
2004 HI-RES (co-author: Mala Kline)
2004 Rondinella (co-authors: Mauricio Ferlin in Mala Kline)
2004 Properly Blond (co-author: Mala Kline)
2002 Mezzanino
2001 6agon
1999 Gina & Miovanni
1995 Manifestation of the Introvert
Longer biography >>>
Awards
In 2010 she won the Prešeren Fund Award, the highest recognition for achievements in the field of art in the Republic of Slovenia. In 2013 her performance Shame was awarded as best performance of the Slovenian Dance Platform Moving-Cake. In the same year Luka Prinčič and Maja Delak received Liberal Acadamy Golden Bird Award for the artistic achievements on the field of performing arts. In 2015 the Collective of dance pedagogues of Secondary Preschool Education & Gymnasium Ljubljana - Contemporary dance programme (SVŠGL) won the award Ksenija Hribar for pedagogical work. In 2019 Maja Delak won the award Ksenija Hribar for her original coreographic opus.
Published articles
(in Slovene language):
Maja Delak: SODOBNI PLES IN KULTURNA VZGOJA / Contemporary dance and cultural education - Miscellany Kultura in umetnost v izobraževanju - popotnica 21. stoletja, N. Požar in N. Bucik (ur.): Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut, 2008.
(in English language):
Maja Delak: EXPENSIVE DARLINGS – A REVISION (a note on a creative process of the performance) - Artistic-political-theoretical-discursive platform Reartikulacija no. 4, Summer 2008
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