Jasper Džuki Jelen

Jasper Džuki Jelen (NL/SI) works as a choreographer/performer. Graduate from Codarts (2006). Jelen worked for a decade with Erik Kaiel/Arch8 and developed into a co-creating dancer, while performing works such as No man is an Island and Murikamification throughout Europe. Parallel to his performing career Jelen developed choregraphic- and movement methods in residencies and commissioned works. He is a returning guest teacher at professional dance faculties in The Netherlands and Belgium (Codarts, Artesis, Fontys, AHK/5 o’clock class) teaching the subjects: partnering, floorwork and improvisation, as well as the site-specific programm Making Space.

In 2014 architect/performer Mojra Vogelnik Škerlj and Jelen established The100Hands. Central to their work is the physical contact between people and its implications in contemporary society. In a time where a major part of our communication is digital, social activities seems to remove themselves further and further away from the physical. The100Hands re-mind, re-discover and re-invent the meaning of live physical contact. By acknowledging the presence of everyone during a performance and redefining the safe roles of performer/viewer, The100Hands seek to tap into everyones physical understanding of social interaction. By going off-stage and by letting the moving body relate in familiar and unfamiliar ways to its surrounding, fundamental themes as safety, intimacy, sexuality, friction and the questions of power and trust surface. Their physical and open approach has led to works that speak to the understanding of young- and mature audiences alike. In the first years the main focus was on creating this open and trusting relationship with an audience. The latest work 25Feet challenges this established sense of safety by exposing the audience also to more violent and intimate (physical) interactions.

The100Hands have co-produced works with Krokusfestival (Belgium), Aabendans (Denmark), Dansstationen (Sweden), D-CAF (Egypt) and Dansbrabant (The Netherlands).