Kolektiv Plesnega teatra Ljubljana

In the cultural and artistic restlessness of the 1980s and 1990s, Ksenija Hribar, together with her collaborators, decided to develop the cultural system of contemporary dance that she knew from her involvement in the establishment of British contemporary dance in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s in London, where she studied at the London Contemporary Dance School and danced in the London Contemporary Dance Theatre (produced and founded by Robin Howard’s Dance Trust). The founding team—Ksenija Hribar, Sinja Ožbolt, Breda Sivec, and Brane Završan—performed for the first time, along with Marko Mlačnik, in the Adagio (choreographed by Ksenija Hribar) as the Today for the Last Time (Danes zadnjikrat) collective at the Dance Days Festival at the Cultural and Congress Centre Cankarjev dom in December 1983, and Dance Theatre Ljubljana (Plesni teater Ljubljana – PTL) first performed under its name with the evening of dances Baptism at the world music festival Druga godba on 30th of May 1985 at the Križanke Summer Theatre Ljubljana. Yet, the significance of Dance TheatreLjubljana in Slovenia is broader than a collective of artists. Dance Theatre Ljubljana was the incubator of artists as well as the system of production, advocacy, financing, education, postproduction, social security mechanisms, a dance guild as well as other elements of professionalism in the field of dance. Dance Theatre Ljubljana worked as the collective from 1985 to 1993, when it was restructured into a production house. In 1994, Živa Brecelj, who took up the position of a producer, with her efforts of advocating managed to facilitate a venue on Prijateljeva 2 in the Prule district of Ljubljana where Dance Theatre Ljubljana still resides. In the first period after Slovenia became an independent republic, Dance Theatre Ljubljana played a significant role in facilitating contemporary dance and the basic conditions for work.

From Nika Arhar, Jasmina Založnik (ed.), Bodies ofm Dance, Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After (Belgrade, 2024)