A correspondence, in an atmosphere of warmth and drift, in the scorching heat of fleeting days that never seem to end.
Ok, write me seven mutually independent notions related to your dance life. One word, maybe two, that make a motif. Don’t explain anything , don’t overthink it, just write seven words that mean something to you and I’ll make questions out of them.
*ASPIRING
A verb turned into a noun, a directional movement apprehended in a pulsating frame. What is aspiring in your dance experience? What did you aspire at when you first started dancing and how has the horizon shifted since then?
I started dancing in kindergarten. Although I can’t recall dancing at that age (except that it made me very happy to dance out the story of The Three Little Pigs with my friends and I remember my first ‘duet’ with my mother ‘about birds’) I do remember the great enthusiasm I felt in responding to tasks of doing a good grand jete across the length of three mats without touching the floor with my heels in Savica kindergarten. Being in the right house (group) for silent and loud music, and later giving my best in ballet school so I would get praised by the teacher that day, accomplishing that fuette by opening the leg, getting the choreography right to fast music as well, winning the competition, being in the ‘good row’ in the seminar, being as the confident as the girl next to me. Even later when I did not have an exact vision of what my dancing should ‘look like’ and where it would lead me, I knew I would dance and I was preparing the whole time. Aspiring. I will never forget how at the end of high school it wasn’t enough just to train so I ran laps around the school yard, sometimes in deep snow, because I had to keep in shape. Later, with joining theaters and fighting to get hired the aspiring continues. You want your place under the sun, you want the choreographer to notice you, you want a certain solo, duet, trio. You always want to be a little bit better than yesterday.
The same is true with working with children, with people. You always want them to be the best version of themselves, to meet challenge head on and enjoy themselves doing it, feel passionate about it. That’s why I always think about aspiring when I think about dance.
*FULFILLMENT
When it comes to artistic fulfillment, an exchange of filling and emptying, which moments in dance are the fullest and which the emptiest?
Artistic fulfillment can be many moments connected to dance, many small and big challenges, personal successes, or other people’s successes you contributed to. However, for those of us who spend our time under the limelight, I would like to quote a fellow dancer who said it so well: ‘’It’s that moment when you lose track of space and time around you. When you know, but also don’t know what you are doing, but just feel it. When your eyes roll, and your skin gets goosebumps. When you almost hiss or cry and stand your ground like an animal, pure joy and passion is coming out of you. When you don’t care who is watching, and what anyone is thinking; you are protected in your truest self.’ The emptiest moments? Everything other than that.
*LOVE
Paint us a picture, in whatever medium, of a movement or a sequence of movements or a choreographic proposal that for you embodies the notion of love at this moment.
I wanted to offer a photograph. Then I went to the gallery and stayed looking for at least an hour. There is so much hapinness and love in these photographs so it was hard to decide. However, I have chosen a few and you can find them by following the link. Let’s include whichever speaks to you the most.
(Love Choice:)
*PATH
Describe a path as a notion by describing a show you were part of. What does it mean, how does it sound, how does it vibrate?
I chose the performance ‘Race against time’. It involves two sisters choreographing and dancing together. Luna and Nika Lilek. Our first artistic collaboration. I took it as an example because it was the longest, most challenging and demanding process. There was a lot of changes, thinking, tears, pushing through boundaries. Understanding and not, giving up, realizing, screaming, accepting, laughing, getting to grips with it, grey yellow and then bluish red, passion, strength, dad, family, togetherness.
This would be the description of the path through our performance.
*CHAOS
It seems that teaching is an important part of your work, the transfer of knowledge which always implies an intense process of learning for the one who teaches others. How do you teach chaos?
I don’t know how you teach chaos, haha. I think chaos is, whether you want it or not, something that sooner or later finds you. For me it’s a symbol of change. Something that starts happening and I let it into my life, it gets a hold of me every time I need to let something happen. The old stays behind me so that the new may come. It would happen every time I would move, or look for a new work opportunity, or in a a project: the last phase before the finish line. Before the final part in a creative process when we think nothing is going according to plan, when tears come, and everybody is vulnerable and tired. In class the moment before everything comes together and it starts working. You need to allow this to happen and to know that tomorrow is a new day and a new opportunity, allow yourself to trust things will take their course and help things move along (a better tomorrow).
*FAITH
Describe faith as an element of dance that you have witnessed in a performance you watched, that you were not part of, but one that has had a profound influence on you.
This would be Hermaphrodites of the soul by Žak Valenta.
I don’t know why it had such a deep effect on me. Maybe because how raw it is and the seriousness of the topic the actors and dancers conveyed to us with such intensity. The true event that shocked me in the way it was presented, the multimedia aspect of it. The freedom and the security, the truthfullness that came out of it. It made a deep impression on me and still I get flashbacks of it although it’s been ten years since I saw it!
It made me realize that art is powerful and that it changes lives. We need to develop it, question it, abandon ourselves to it, nurture it, develop our voice and pay attention to how and when we are heard.
*GROWTH
As an art form that works with the body as a medium, and the body being perishable matter, how do you grow in dance after having grown up with dance? What do you imagine growth could be when continuing down the same path is no longer possible?
Maybe I have already partly answered this question. A constant learning how to say something, if not through my own body, then through others’. Transmission of knowledge, energy, creativity to others? Connecting, sharing, coming to new realizations, constant aspiring.
Learning how to use my body in a different way. Staying current, keeping up. I am dealing with these questions myself right now and I don’t have a concrete answer. I am also looking for an answer, but I am convinced that every time I feel the spark, that passion that reminds me I am on the right path and that I never want to stop looking for it.
(A bit more love, inaprop(e)riately, for a temporary ending: )
NIKA LILEK was born in December 1990.
She makes her first dance steps at dance school moDuS, of her mother Snježana Lilek.
Having graduated from high school for classical ballet in Zagreb in 2007, she continues her education in an international context (travels to New York for the Alvin Ailey summer intensive program, travels and participates in various projects and seminars in Europe).
In 2014, she became a member of the Zagreb Dance Company under the direction of Snježana Abramović, and later on Petra Glad.
She joined the Croatian National Theater in Rijeka, under the direction of Maša Kolar, in 2017;
And in 2019 she became a member of the ensemble Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, under the direction of Rami Be’er.žShe participates in the creation of various projects and creations, among which she highlights:
‘NN’ duet with colleague Nastia Chechun and ‘Fae’ solo at the sight of colleague Michal Vach, and the short form project ‘This Did Something To Me’ which she created for the Dance journey program led by Kibbutz Contemporary dance company.
In August 2022, she returns to Croatia and continues her journey as a freelance artist and pedagogue in the dance school moDuS.
In 2023, she joins the Zagreb Dance Company as an external collaborator for the project ‘Gran Bolero’ by choreographer Jesus Rubio Gamo, and ‘There, where all souls go’ by Miloš Isailović (2024), and works on the author project, full evening piece “Race Against Time” with her sister Luna Lilek.
She still loves to share her love for dance, explore and create with young dancers.