[8:tension]⁺ Young Choreographers' Series

"SaD SaM (revisited)"

This is the fortune of manhood
Images and image.
Burning the calm fever of love.
I press the button.
He feels.
Fainting upon the obstacle of touching.
Nothing I care remains.
He took the silence.
I took the devotion of a staring fantasy.
I‘ve made a comedy of becoming a man next to an animal

(Katalina Mella)

Theoretician Marina Grzinic has described Matija Ferlin as a “terrorist (in a Deleuzian sense)”. The young choreographer is considered a continuer of the conceptual aesthetics of artists like Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy. However, he actually combines conceptual approaches with radical physicality and movement in a new, extraordinary way. To project the immediate poetry of Katalina Mella, Ferlin exhibits the character of “SaD SaM”. He shrinks neither from the painfulness nor the embarrassment of lost love and growing up, and plays ably with the tension between the visible and the invisible, between the warmth of intimacy and the coldness of being exhibited.

After finishing his studies at the SNDO in Amsterdam, Matija Ferlin has worked with Sasha Waltz, David Zambrano and Ame Henderson, among others. In addition to his choreographies he also creates short films and installations. He lives and works in Pula.