The title of the play is a symbol of times gone by towards which we have a strong emotional relationship.
To the younger generations House of Flowers doesn’t mean more than the mere meaning of the words, for slightly older generations, the title is a symbol, which carries a myriad of various reminiscences and additional meanings. Sometimes in life, our relationship to the past changes quickly, and with it, our interpretation of the symbols. Accordingly, the relationship and the interpretation of private experiences change too.

House of Flowers does not intend to make comments on the actual relation between symbols and political events in the past, but to address the impulses and the obstacles, which guide our emotional responses and intimate relationships. Our private life unfolds concurrently with historical events, and it is therefore impossible to escape the context of time. Our interpretation of the context of the past is influenced by our private and intimate experiences. That is the departure point for the choreography.

House of Flowers continues in the dramaturgical frame of the choreography. The funeral is a ritual in which the circle of life is being locked. That is the point at which occurs the process of breaking up with the past. All that we haven’t done until that moment, and had wished to do, now we can’t do. Thus we seek apologies or surrender to regret for all that remained unsaid, unrealized and unlived.

Matjaž Farič
 

Having been at educated at the Maribor Ballet School and the Palucca Schule in Dresden, as well as established of a few dance groups, the career of Matjaž Farič, ranging from dance to choreography, began in the eighties. With his first company, the Eastern Dance Project, Farič performed a string of his early works: Sixth of April and Breakdown (1988), Red Alarm (1989), Emotional (1990), Icht (1991). In 1988, he danced in Ballet Observatory ZENIT within the scope of the Red Pilot group. Farič staged Wind, Sand and Stars in Slovensko mladinsko gledališče in 1991 and was awarded the Borštnik Prize for an original project. In 1993 he presented the »roam'o'dance« DERR, and Solo later that year. This was followed by re-interpretations of ballet classics The Swan Lake (1994), Romeo and Juliet (1995), Le Sacre du printemps (1996), Trilogy, Last Chapter (1997). In the season of 1997/98, Farič created Clone in the Dance Theatre Ljubljana, followed by its shorter version RAM; next year Island was staged. In the autumn of 1999 Flota was established with which Farič first staged Terminal (picked as the Slovene performance of 1999 in Mladina) as the resident choreographer of Cankarjev dom. In 2000 there followed 10 degrees below O, and in 2001 Temptation. In 2002 he created 3.oLo and Talk Me Your Body, while in 2003 A Circle in the Body – A Square in the Head, and in 2004 Bari. In 2006 Farič created Numbbodynumpoems and later same year Whywouldanyonestopme in which he finished his dancing career. In the year 2008 he created a work Order for newly established En Knap Group. Same year he directed and choreographed Macbeth. One of his most outstanding dance works is Shiver created with Slovenian composer Milko Lazar in 2009. After finishing his study of Theatre and radio direction at the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana in 2010, Farič created dance-theatre performance Let The Children Come To Me at the beginning of 2011.

Abroad Farič has asserted himself as a dancer with the Amsterdam group Testworks (season 1988/89), as a choreographer with Studio za suvremeni ples Zagreb (he staged Stravinski i ja/Stravinsky and Me, 1995, and Posvećenje proljeća/The Rite of Spring, 2004) and with Diversions Dance Company from Cardiff (From the Desert Through the Forest, 1997). In 2004 he staged Beta in 2006 Seule and in 2008 Parted for the French Compagnie Coline. As a choreographer he contributed to theatre and opera performances in Ljubljana, Nova Gorica, Celje, Maribor, Klagenfurt, Zagreb, Rijeka, Varaždin and Antwerpen – most often in collaboration with the directors such as Vito Taufer (Odysseus and Son, Kraljevo, Timon of Athens, Tartuffe, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs), Eduard Miler (Magic and Loss, Susn, Baal, Miss Julie) and Matjaž Zupančič (The Threepenny Opera, The Corridor, Hamlet).

He has won many awards at home and abroad, especially worth mentioning are the prize at the New Dance Competition in Budapest (1986), prize at the 10th ballet competition of GDR (1987), Zlata ptica (The Golden Bird Award) (1988), prize awarded at Borštnikovo srečanje (1991), Zlatni lovor venac (The Golden Laurel Wreath) for choreography at MESS (1991), the Župančič Award (1994), the Prešeren Fund Prize 1998 (for the series of re-interpretations of ballet classics, and for Clone). In 1998 he won the prestigious accolade at the biennial world competition of choreographers in Seine-Saint-Denis, France, for his choreography RAM. In 2003 there followed the Zlata paličica (the Golden Baton Award) and the award for outstanding achievements in culture of the municipality of his home town Murska Sobota. In the year 2010 Farič won Grand Prix at 14. Prix Marulić for the short radio play Hamlet.
Matjaž Farič is the artistic director of NGO Flota and Front@ Festival as well as initiator of Dance Explorations Beyond Front@ network.