Moritz Ostruschnjak: NON + ULTRAS (2025)
Sunday, 29 November 2026, at 8:00 pm
Cankarjev dom, Linhartova dvorana
dance performance
Duration: 75 min.
Tickets: 23/27 EUR
* The performance is not included in the general festival pass*
Moritz Ostruschnjak opened CoFestival in 2022 with the solo Dance Instructions/ It Won’t Always Be Like This (2020). This year, we welcome him back to the programme for the second time. When allegiance to political views starts to resemble football fandom, we are probably already deep beyond politics. Left, right, liberal — we mustn’t let ourselves be blinded by these political Pepsi or Coca-Cola brands, because fascism is a virus that could take up residence in any one of them.
When the Ancient Greeks encountered other cultures on their military campaigns and realised that the same everyday contents and functions took different forms among them, abstract thought began to develop out of this understanding of difference. Sports disciplines together with the ancient Olympic Games were nothing other than abstractions of martial skills and military functions. Modern-day sports have abstracted armies into teams and the stands of sports venues have been filled with the masses. National teams of modern states have mobilised fandoms that, in periods of heightened political tension, readily turn into nationalist rallies, often requiring police intervention. Ever since the rise of mass media, the interweaving of sport and politics has become one of the most powerful and most insidious forms of contemporary political and economic propaganda, by default entirely unregulated. Sports journalism is probably one of the most compromised forms of the journalistic profession.
The collective work NON + ULTRAS places this menagerie of sporting signs and materiality under the microscope, in which a battlefield of signs, textuality, symbols, physicality, and visual, dance and (pop) cultural genre-forms clash on sports grounds. There, where the instincts of uninhibited crowds of fans are normally released, and beyond cultural discomforts. In the menagerie of sports culture, where, for the sake of capital profits, various communal orgasms are welcome. Where different ethnic, national, class and gender frustrations get to feel good for a few hours. “NON + ULTRAS uses dance, video and music to create a vortex of layers of meaning that seem to reach out arbitrarily and unpredictably in every direction. It discloses a society that surrenders to the power of images, honouring sports stars and political populists alike, and that is irreconcilably polarised,” write the performance’s creators. Mass ornaments take many forms. The disciplined bodies of military parades or stadium spectacles are just one of them; instincts always accompany them from the stands.
Choreography: Moritz Ostruschnjak
Choreographic collaboration: Daniela Bendini Dance: Guido Badalamenti, David Cahier, Edoardo Cino, Daniel Conant, Nora Monsecour, Roberto Provenzano, Miyuki Shimizu, Magdalena Agata Wójcik
Video: Moritz Stumm
Lighting Design: Tanja Rühl
Music Mixing & Editing: Jonas Friedlich
Stage Design: Moritz Stumm, Moritz Ostruschnjak
Costume Design: Daniela Bendini, Moritz Ostruschnjak
Dramaturgy: Armin Kerber
Production Management: Susanne Ogan
Public Relations: Simone Lutz
Financial Administration: transmissions
Touring: Oliver Chrzanowski
Organised by Kino Šiška, Cankarjev dom and NDA Slovenija