Funambulist
LIZA PENKOVA IN COLLABORATION WITH DEJANA SEKULIĆ AND NAO MOMITANI
WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH 2025 19.00 AT ATALANTE – TICKETS HERE
shared evening with "Murmurs on Mami Wata"
Funambulist is a poetic exploration of the feeling of exile, performed by one dancer and two musicians. Inspired by Sofia Gubaidulina’s composition Seiltänzer (Tightrope dancer), the piece develops a movement language between stillness and the moment just before a fall. This physical process is connected to a broader, metaphorical idea of endurance required—physically, mentally, and emotionally—by those who are displaced or separated from their roots.
Gubaidulina wrote Seiltänzer during her move from the collapsing Soviet Union to Europe. She described it as a tightrope walk over an abyss, reflecting her search for safety and identity as an artist in exile.
This theme is still relevant today. In today's polarized world, with a declining willingness for dialogue and consensus, where censorship has once again become a tool, exile can represent not only a state of displacement but also a sense of alienation, balancing the fine line between daily cultural, economic, or ideological differences.
Liza Penkova is a Swedish dance-artist living and working in Gothenburg. Born in St Petersburg/Russia in 1981 she arrived as a teenager to Sweden in 1993 and since have been living, studying and working in Sweden and Europe.Since 2020 she works as a choreographer, pedagogue and dancer. Currently she is writing an MA-thesis on dance-literacy at the Stockholm university of the arts. As a choreographer her interest lie in the processes of translation and creolization of language, culture and aesthetics. With movement research as a foundation in her work, she looks for border-less encounters of performing genres, traditions and physical cultures. She often relies on historical archives as an important source of inspiration in both her artistic and academic work. Making visible invisible stories by re-cycling past knowledge has become a reoccurring theme. Beside choreographic and pedagogical work Liza has recently initiated a podcast focusing on interviews with local dance-artists in Västra Götaland-region.
Previously, Liza worked as a professional dancer in Brussels, Belgium. After her studies at The Royal Swedish Ballet school, P.A.R.T.S and her first professional engagement with the Gothenburg Opera Ballet, she spent a significant amount of time working for the world-known choreographer Anne Teresa deKeersmaeker and her company Rosas. During those years Liza also had the opportunity to work with the Antwerp-based theater group TgSTAN. In her last years in Brussels she had a meaningful working encounter with the well-admired choreographer Michele Noirét . Since 2012 she has been participating as a dancer in several productions of the established Swedish choreographer Helena Franzén as well as worked with freelance choreographers in Belgium such as Georgia Vardarou and Veli Lehtovaara .Throughout the years in Brussels Liza was also one of the initiators behind the collective Phd in one night. Work that pushed her into becoming interested in educational research which has greatly impacted her own voice as a choreographer and as a dance-scholar.
dejana sekulić is a violinist, sound+silence explorer, composer-performer, and indisciplinary artist, born at 43°18’58.5”N 21°54’39.5”E. A passionate advocate for the music of our time, dejana holds a PhD from the University of Huddersfield (UK), where she conducted her doctoral studies at the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) and the Research Centre for Performance Practices (ReCePP), under the guidance of Philip Thomas, Aaron Cassidy, and Mary Bellamy. dejana's dissertation, titled “Temporality of the Impossible”, focuses on the multifaceted process of preparation of complex pieces from the late 20th and 21st centuries. In February 2022 NMC/Huddersfield Contemporary Records released her solo violin CD bearing the same title. dejana obtained her bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Art University of Niš (Serbia), followed by Masters studies and Post Master specialisation in music at the Royal Conservatory Brussels (with Igor Oistrakh, Valery Oistrakh, and Bart Bouckaert), and an advanced program for contemporary music lead by ICTUS (Brussels) and Spectra (Gent) ensembles at the School of Arts Gent (Belgium). She actively performs as a soloist, regularly collaborates with composers, and is engaged with performance and collaborative creations both with musicians and with artists from different disciplines. In recent years, dejana performed, among others, at festivals such as hcmf// (UK), Music Biennale Zagreb (Croatia), Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), BAM! (Germany), Donaueshinger Festival (Germany), ArsMusica Festival (Belgium), BigBang Festival (Portugal/Belgium/France), TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), LOOP Festival (Belgium), Hellerau Festival in Dresden (Germany), Sintese Festival (Portugal), CTM Festival (Berlin, Germany). She is part of the art and education research collective People Coming from NowHere. dejana also creates and develops works in the fields of interactive sound installations and multimedia. dejana is regularly invited to give workshops and lectures on contemporary performance and violin to higher education institutions and new music research institutes across Europe (including Portugal, Germany, Italy, Croatia, and UK).
After obtaining a Master degree of piano at the University of Osaka, the Japanese pianist Nao Momitani continued specialization in Europe, especially with masters such as Diane Andersen and Kornelia Ogorkowna. Having chosen Belgium as a place of residence, she successively obtained the first prize for piano, Chamber Music and accompaniment at the Royal Conservatory of Liege, and a Masters in piano at the Graduate School of Arts - Royal Conservatory of Mons. She is also the recipient of several international competitions, including the International Competition Kobe (Japan), the Chopin Competition (Texas, USA )and "Classical Discoveries of the Euroregion" Contest (France).
Since then, she has participated in numerous concerts as a soloist - including concerts with the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonie, the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, both with the Liège Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestra (concerts in Japan, the United States, France, Belgium and Spain, -especially in the international set: Spain-Belgium-France-Japan - Semaphone) and shows a special interest in the music of our time, in which she is established as an artist who participate and premiers new creations. She is actif with Laps Ensemble, ensemble that works with combining acoustic and electronic production of sound.Wife of composer Claude Ledoux, she participated in the first of a major piano works of this composer, parts of which are dedicated to her especially.She recorded some CDs of labels Cyprès, Sub Rosa, Wallonie Bruxelles Musique and OSTINATO.She is currently preparing recordings of original contemporary solo piano works. In recent years she shows her originality by offering original programming of mixed music (piano and electronics - Festival Sound Images / New Music Festival-Mons / Brussels-Loop Festival ...) and also towards a scenic setting for research Hours of Operation value of gesture-music. For the Ars Musica Festival, she presented a recital where original music is confronted with Martial Arts (practice sword) and video. The performance of production "Piano, movements of the orient... confined to sound, water, light and saber", under the direction of designer Anne Englbert, was successfully created. Nao teaches at l’Académie de Saint-Nicolas (Liège) Belgium.
RADIX is supported by The City of Gothenburg Arts and Cultural Affairs Committee and The Region Västra Götaland Cultural Affairs Committee