SHIFT INTO AN UNKNOWN PAUSE and VOLUME OF MEMORY

Saturday, 9 May 2026, at 6:00 p.m.; SomaHut festival

SHIFT INTO AN UNKNOWN PAUSE, performance-experiential work by Anja Bornšek with an introduction to the performance by Tina Valentan, and VOLUME OF MEMORY, performance work by Tina Valentan with an introduction to viewing by Anja Bornšek.

Within the context of the SomaHut festival, dance artists Anja Bornšek and Tina Valentan propose a dialogue between related methodologies emerging from somatic and process-based work. In this shared format, the authors are interested in how one practice can prepare and expand perception for another, how the spectator gradually shifts from observer to participant in the experience, and how the process is recorded and continued through trace, without the need for immediate explanation.

Anja Bornšek will perform the work Shift into an Unknown Pause, based on a shared experience of slowing down, attention and collective introspection, followed by an invitation to an experience inspired by the Tamalpa (Life/Art Process) approach, led by Tina Valentan, in which participants translate their own experience into a trace — drawing, writing or another medium. This part is not intended as analysis or interpretation, but as an extension of experience. In the second part, Anja guides the audience through a Physical Introduction that gradually softens the position of the spectator and moves them from the role of observer toward a state of perceptual presence. The evening continues with the solo performance Volume of Memory by Tina Valentan. The material of this performance was developed according to the principles of Tamalpa expressive arts therapy. The performance opens a space in which the viewer does not follow a fixed form, but witnesses a living process of the body — oriented toward sensation, presence and internal movement.

Shift into an Unknown Pause is a group experience that understands pause as a space of exploration rather than something passive or predetermined. Through shared slowing down and postponing habitual modes of action, participants enter a state of heightened perception. In this space, attention moves between the internal and external, between one’s own sensations and the presence of others. The pause becomes active and dense, filled with subtle micro-events. The work opens a space of collective introspection in which the group does not share the same experience, but shares the conditions in which experience emerges as a shared perceptual field in constant formation.

Anja Bornšek completed the SEAD dance school in Salzburg and graduated in contemporary dance pedagogy (MACoDE Frankfurt). She has furthered her training in somatics (Body-Mind Centering®), which strongly shapes her artistic and pedagogical approach. She collaborates with dance artists Maja Delak, Andreja Rauch Podržavnik, Snježana Premuš, Mala Kline, Begum Erciyas and Matija Ferlin. She develops and leads educational and artistic-pedagogical formats, including participatory formats for audiences (Physical Introduction and Physical Traces). She is the recipient of the Ksenija Hribar Award for promising choreographer.

Concept and artistic direction: Anja Bornšek

Performed by: Anja Bornšek and Tina Valentan

Sound: Tomaž Tomljanović

Lighting: Toni Soprano Meneglejte

Production: Nagib Maribor / Executive producer: Petra Hazabent

Project partners: MKC Maribor, Plesna Izba Maribor, Tanz Graz and DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology

Financial support: Ministry of Culture and City of Maribor

Volume of Memory is a solo performance in which the body is revealed as a living interface between the individual and the world. Through movement, voice and presence, the artist opens a space of bodily memory and the unconscious, in which the solid merges with the fluid, form with overflow. In the dialogue between body, space and sound, a living structure of relations emerges – a space that breathes, listens and returns to the source.

Tina Valentan is a dancer, choreographer and educator who explores a wide spectrum of expressivity, from playful and humorous to intimate, sexual and animalistic. She graduated from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. She continues her education at the Tamalpa Institute through a program of expressive arts therapy based on movement.

Author and performer: Tina Valentan

Outside eye/ear: Anja Bornšek

Sound design: Tomaž Tomljanović

Physical introduction: Anja Bornšek

Costume design: Tomaž Tomljanović

Graphic design: Megajver

Production: Tina Valentan

Co-production: Project Space DUM – Association of Artists, NAGIB Maribor (executive producer: Petra Hazabent), MKC Maribor

Partners: LGM and Plesna izba Maribor

Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia – two-year author project, City of Ljubljana and City of Maribor