COH
Jānis Balodis works in theatre professionally since 2009. He started as a playwright, and has graduated from playwright’s department at the Academy of Culture of Latvia. In 2012 for the first time Jānis was becoming a performer in the work he was working on at that moment, and since then he occasionally continues to perform. From 2014 to 2018 he also worked as a voluntary drama class teacher at school, where he was developing tools and methods how to work with non-actors and started to slowly develop his own theatrical language as a maker. After two year MA Theatre studies in Amsterdam he has returned to Latvia to focus on creating performative and theatrical experiences either individually or in collaboration with other theatre makers.
Since the beginning Jānis is being busy with trying to understand why some things in society, in economics or in politics happen is some certain way, and what are things and ideas that exist in periphery and why? In his recent works he is being interested in potential of merging current socio-political urgencies with imaginative and dream-like theatrical language.
Katrīna Dūka is an artist with a background of creative producing and dramaturgical thinking. She has graduated from the Academy of Culture at Latvia as a creative producer and it is exactly the skill of producing that has given Katrīna the ability to search for practical and clear answers to complicated artistic questions. As of 2020 she is pursuing a Masters degree in Performance Practices at the ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands.
Katrīna is intrigued by the notions of togetherness and radical intimacy and she is interested in understanding how to evoke the two in post-soviet societies. Katrina is motivated by sincere and honest cynicism built upon humor and she’s trying to make sure that both are also present in her artwork.
Barbara Lehtna has worked as a theatremaker for a little bit more than six years. In 2019 she started her master studies on Theatre Practices at ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands. Her research topics consist of ethics, archives and personal stories and her practice is built upon storytelling through different performative genres: dance, physical theatre and auto-teatro. Through the years, Barbara has had a chance to work with artists like Doris Uhlich, Julian Hetzel, Ant Hampton and Chris Kondek among others, which has lead Barbara to distinguishing her own style of inquisitive theatre.
In the last three years, she has started to make her own work that has focused on learning the everydayness, culture of memory and the ethics of identity building. She has been interested in different issues like the influence of the Industry 4.0 on everydayness or the challenges that appear with societal norms in Post-Soviet society, but also in the ethics of using her own personal relationships on stage in order to unravel the micro-politics that get exposed when self-archiving. Barbara believes that art should touch and therefore it should always be political, yet try to reach also the person who denounces politics.
Nahuel Cano was born in Neuquén, Patagonia Argentina, in 1982. He lives and works between Buenos Aires and Amsterdam. He is an actor, theatre-maker, and researcher. As an actor, he worked both in cinema and theatre with renowned directors like Lucrecia Martel, Lotte van Der Berg and Alejandro Tantanián among others. From 2010 until 2017 as a maker Nahuel developed his artistic projects together with his group “El Cuarto” (www.estudioelcuarto.com), these works have been presented in multiple international festivals and have received support and awards from national and international institutions.
His field of artistic action is mobile, exploring the possibilities of performance, installation, cinema, and theatre. Nahuel is a founding member of Escena Política ( www.escenapolitica.org ), an artistic and political collective that has organized actions, forums, performances, and political-artistic protests.