OBMOČJE ZA PEŠCE/PJEŠAČKA ZONA/PEDESTRIAN ZONE

Director and choreographer: Branko Potočan
Dancer: Branko Potočan
Music: Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar
Light design: Tomaž Štrucl
Set and costume design: Branko Potočan
Production: Cankarjev dom, 2004

To Branko Potočan "Pedestrian zone" symbolises a zone free from city rush where we can give way to our imagination and let it take us to a place ruled by different laws of existence. This is a mosaic of surrealism where our desires and unfulfilled dreams are confronted with reality that takes a person to all sides and mixes fiction with reality. Viewing himself with an ironical distance, Branko Potočan will peel fear from his armour of courage and reach higher with every jump.

Branko Potočan wrote: “I view the term pedestrian zone as a meaningful and indispensable supplement to our daily life which poses a counterpoint to our stressful daily morning-to-night race. With this, I balance my psychosocial equilibrium. In other words, I see the pedestrian zone as a space in time, where we ease up. We permit our imagination to spread its wings and take us to heights yet undreamt of, where different laws of physics and existence apply. I perceive it as a safeguarding valve for the releasing of wishes, intentions, ideas and needs, which we felt or still fell, need, want, wish; if only on the spur of a moment or in the elation of fiction. As a rule, these things oppose the gravity of reality (floating, flying, undulation...).”

The solo Pedestrian Zone is a light, relaxed miniature, distinguished by Potočan’s extraordinary imagination choreographic talent and a sense for details that are frequently carried out with startling and humorous solutions. Pedestrian Zone is a well-structured solo, in which Potočan interweaves his two strongest points: detailed movement and excellent performance.
Mojca Kumerdej: Unbearable Lightness of Moving, Delo daily, 30 January 2004