Patricija Crnkovič participated in the Artists Encounter at Spring Forward 2025
Dance can be a means of introspection, and that’s especially true for the Slovenian dancer and choreographer Patricija Crnkovič. Since graduating from Codarts in Rotterdam five years ago, she has focused on mining the relationship between inner feelings and social behaviour, between mind and movement. More recently, her interest in the human mind and its functions led her to start studying integrative physical psychotherapy. She is currently based in Slovenia, where she teaches dance and develops her choreographic work as a freelancer.
How did you first encounter dance?
It’s a story I used to tell, but I’m not completely sure anymore if it’s true. My mother told me that when I was a child, at the age of four or five, I was extremely shy. So she went with me to dance classes, where we danced together side by side, in order for me to gain some confidence and to put myself out there. Then I started going to ballet classes when I was six or seven, and it just stuck with me.
When did you start thinking dance could become your profession?
In high school. I attended as a regular student, but I was also studying at the conservatory for ballet and music and separately training in modern dance and the basics of contemporary dance. I started to wonder what I wanted to do in the future and it seemed logical that I would continue dancing. There was nothing that really interested me enough to say: ‘Okay, I’m going to put that (=dance) aside and study something else.’
You’ve said that in your work, you deal with psychological structures and uncovering unconscious stories…
I’ve always been very interested in psychology and psychoanalysis. So, through the artistic research that we were doing at Codarts university, I started to investigate other systems or psychic structures that affect the body, like posture, directions, ways of moving. So I think that in my work, this is always a starting point, and then it’s about exploring what comes out and finding the edges.
Your work O NAS (About us), created with Tjaša Bucik, deals with femininity and sexuality. How do you feel about the gap between genders in today’s world, and in your cultural context?
It was something that I questioned while doing this work, because we were exploring femininity in connection with our Slovenian background. We started from the stories that Milena Miklavčič, a Slovenian author, collected from older generations of women in the book Ogenj, rit in kače niso za igrače (Fire, donkeys and snakes are not toys). The stories deal with their sexual life, their personal relationships, their families, and a lot of those stories are quite tragic. So this was the starting point of our piece. Then we decided to work with two younger girls and with two older ladies, and to place ourselves in between. And we went on to explore what being a woman in this world meant for somebody 30, 40, 50 years ago, how things are changing, and what this relationship between generations brought.
How did you decide to come back to Slovenia after studying in the Netherlands? Are you happy here?
Yes, I’m happy to be here. It’s another one of those things that I didn’t plan, it just happened and then it felt right. I graduated in 2020, when Coronavirus started, and I had this big moment of confusion: ‘Should I stay here, or should I move back?’ I think it was a good decision to move back to Slovenia, as it offered me quite a lot of possibilities to do my own work. Of course, there are things that I miss. I like to travel and do projects abroad. But in general, Slovenia is a great place and we have a lot of amazing dancers, choreographers and venues. I just hope it will develop even more, structurally, to have the support to bring all that out and to bring in even more international projects. That’s why we’re here!