Aleksandra Naumovski Potisk, music
Luka Žiher, choreography
Saša Potisk, idea, script, scenography, light and direction
Urša Vidmar/Luka Žiher, dancers
Jan Bučar, actor
Tina Kolenik, costume designer

Production: Cultural Artistic Society Cona 8

Co-production: the Ljubljana Festival, SNG Opera in balet Maribor

La Fontaine’s Fables  is a new, original ballet performance for children of all ages based on the fables of Jean de la Fontaine. Three of the fables have been chosen for the standard staging: The Mouse and the Lion, The Vain Jackdaw  and The Tortoise and the Hare.  The ballets are linked by an actor, in the role of La Fontaine, who presents the fables (through life situations, reading, narrating, writing, etc.), introduces the audience to the story and talks about the moral of each fable. As a literary form, the fable has a number of clear advantages as a way of communicating with children. Fables feature animals, which are close to the child’s world, in that they are familiar from fairy tales, and can easily be linked to various indicators of human characteristics and personalities. A fable is thus not only educational at the literal level (story and moral), but also formally, as a model of the transference of meanings, in other words metaphors. With La Fontaine’s Fables,  we go a step further in this abstraction – we will establish a direct link in the expression of the same content (simple, suitable for children) through two completely separate media – word and movement. The relationship between the concept underlying the word and the body as the basis of movement is also perhaps not insignificant. Children will be given a direct insight into how the same content (a story that is metaphorical but at the same time easily understood) can be told and expressed through movement and ballet. This purpose will not, of course, be made explicit to the children, but will remain in the background. The children will be left to enjoy the story and the dancing, without burdening them with the analytical position that they are being exposed to. Thanks to its multilayered purpose and message, however, the performance becomes a good investment, perhaps for a future conversation with parents or teachers or simply as an experience and a basis for further personal growth.