»The first premiere of the Pekarna Theatre, an offshoot and contemporary of the Experimental Theatre Glej (1970–) in Ljubljana, was Lado Kralj’s neo-avant-garde staging of Dane Zajc’s poetic drama The Pathwalker (Potohodec) with an encoded critique of the socialist system. Lado Kralj’s 1970/71 NYU studies with Schechner’s The Performance Group along with Grotowski’s marathon lectures, gave him insights into the processes of very different theatre making. Back in Ljubljana, Kralj decided on some radical approaches to stage work. The group led by Kralj decided to use the play as a score, substituting textual parts with physical actions, ecstatic gestures, and chanting. “Active participation [of the public] with immediate response to the action was expected or even encouraged, according to the belief that the kinaesthetic impulses would lead to an emotional resonance, while at the same time allowing for a shift in perception” (Založnik 2024, 163–164). In an interview for the TV Ljubljana, Lado Kralj stated that one of the fundamental intentions of their work is to re-sensitize the public. With the need to stage a play beyond the modern interpretational paradigm and to provide an experiential theatre situation emphasizing the use of non-verbal means of expression, The Pathwalker represents one of the first examples of ritual theatre in Slovenia that retrospectively functions as a choreo-vocalistic work and, with its emphasis on the physical aspects of the performance, shifts focus from the coded production of meaning to the non-representational, material aspects of performance in line with contemporary tendencies in choreography.«
From Nika Arhar, Jasmina Založnik (ed.), Bodies ofm Dance, Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After (Belgrade, 2024)
