Maja Delak

Photo: Nada Žgank / Archive: Emanat, 2015
Occupation Choreography
Art fields Performance, Dance, Burlesque / Cabaret / Varieté, Dance performance, Conceptual dance, Contemporary dance, Dance pedagogy
Collaborators Luka Prinčič, Irena Tomažin Zagoričnik, BARBARA KANC, Bara Kolenc
Born 1969, Novo Mesto, SFR Jugoslavija / SR Slovenija, ex-Yugoslavia
City and country of residence Ljubljana, Slovenia
Other links Emanat
RazUme Database Link to database of artists and exhibitions.

Biography

 

Maja Delak is a choreographer, dancer, performer and pedagogue. She studied contemporary dance at CNDC L'Esquisse in Angers, France, and at numerous dance seminars, lead by internationally renowned pedagogues. She was, from 1993 to 2002, a member of the international dance group En-Knap, and a programme leader of the realization of a high school programme for contemporary dance, provided for at the Pre-School Education and Grammar School Ljubljana, where she teaches. In her choreographic opus, Maja Delak has traversed numerous worlds, which – despite the different themes and approaches to work – whirl into an anchorage of the author's dance poetics, with which she is making a clearer and clearer definition of the methodologies of contemporary art and dance. In 2006, Maja Delak established institute Emanat, with which she aims for the affirmation of contemporary dance – both with performance production as well as with a book programme (Transitions series) and education (Agon).



In 2010 she won the Prešeren Fund Award, the highest recognition for achievements in the field of art in the Republic of Slovenia. In 2013 her performance Shame was awarded as best performance of the Slovenian Dance Platform Moving-Cake. In the same year Luka Prinčič and Maja Delak received Liberal Acadamy Golden Bird Award for the artistic achievements on the field of performing arts. In 2015 the Collective of dance pedagogues of Secondary Preschool Education & Gymnasium Ljubljana - Contemporary dance programme (SVŠGL) won the award Ksenija Hribar for pedagogical work.

 

Source: Emanat

Artist's statement

My decision for creating in the medium of contemporary dance is connected with a possibility to construct a dance idiom, to explore and articulate it. What I am particularly interested in is entering a process, which does not anticipate the final result. I never perceived dance language as a mere result, bound to a certain project, performance, but rather a fruit of continual research and examination of the limits and borders of the medium itself. I always search for points of support in dance language, or better, I test the limits of a certain expression. The field of contemporary dance thus presents to me a continual challenge, as it allows not only the examination of the medium but the questioning of me as an individual as well.

Maja Delak

Source: Emanat

Umetniška dela

Subtitle Video screening and discussion on the book
Type Presentation, Conversation
Date 6 October 2006
City of production Ljubljana
Format 720x576
Duration 05:45

 

[]

Type Contemporary dance
Date 2 October 2004
City of production Ljubljana
Production Zavod EN-KNAP/EN-KNAP Produkcija
Format 720x576
Duration 14:59

 

[]

Type Contemporary dance
Date 6 October 2007
City of production Ljubljana
Format 720x576
Duration 57:46

Maja Delak’s eleventh performance is the first production by the newly founded Emanat (Emanat Institute). A dance piece based on the pleasure of the physical and moving, Expensive Darlings is conditioned by the quasi-institutional status of[]

Type Experimental music, Instrumental music, Live-act, Solo dance performance, Contemporary dance
Date 13 October 2003
City of production Ljubljana
Format 720x576
Duration 43:50