MATTA MATTA 2.0

Everything you can do with gym mats and much more!

A dance performance that doesn’t stay on the mat. It’s sport and dance.

It’s square, but still soft. It’s exhaustion and rest, jumping and then landing, falling and getting up again.

MATTA MATTA 2.0 is about safety and taking a risk.

Three dancers get lost in a landscape of soft floors and the audience is right in the middle of it instead of just being there.

MATTA MATTA 2.0 is an interactive dance performance in gyms for children and adults.

3 dancers initiate a game with 2 large soft floors and 16 small gym mats, in which all visitors find themselves in situations involving safety, risk and cooperation.

The small mats serve as seating and structure the space, but also change shape and role during the show. They become a labyrinth, with dangerously tumbling walls, a tower, a sea of boats around an island, a shield to hide behind, a bed you’ve always dreamed of. The children are busy (re)placing these in a variety of ways in collaboration with the dancers. In these collaborations, the audience is moved and also becomes part of the landscape of the performance. The situation in which the audience is divided into two camps by a wall contrasts with a balancing duet in which everyone sits close to the edge of the large mat. The sound alternates between playful rhythms and beats as well as the sounds of gym mats being pulled and dropped. MATTA MATTA 2.0 needs no words!

The safety of children is a timeless but topical issue in today’s society. The internet and the smartphone offer the opportunity to always know where a child is, to follow them and to limit information and communication with others. On the other hand, children are more accessible to outside information, as well as strangers, and rely on technology more often than their physical knowledge and capabilities.

In theatre for young audiences, too, questions are being asked about the need to increase the supervision of parents and carers. How free can a child play and experiment? How free can theatre still be?

With MATTA MATTA 2.0, Jasper Džuki Jelen and Mojra Vogelnik Škerlj are looking for a physical and tangible way to question these tendencies. The assumption is that children have no direct connection with the concerns of adults and should not be confronted with them in a concrete form. Letting go of the traditional role and attitude of the audience creates an unpredictable situation. MATTA MATTA 2.0 is a practical exercise in dealing with new situations and strangers, an exploration of courage, physical skills, co-operation and self-confidence.