Within is a contemporary dance performance that explores the inner dimensions of human existence. In a world of constant stimuli, accelerated rhythms, and an ever-growing connection to technology, the work turns attention inward, questioning how we experience ourselves beneath external appearances, social roles, and the expectations that shape our everyday lives.
The performance descends into the individual’s inner world—a kind of black hole of self-reflection, where confronting one’s own reflection can become increasingly difficult. Beneath the surface lies a complex labyrinth of thoughts, fears, memories, desires, and unspoken emotions. The body becomes a space where these invisible inner processes take physical form, revealing tension, vulnerability, resistance, and the continuous search for balance.
At the heart of Within lies transformation. The body moves from confinement and alienation toward gradual openness, undergoing an inner metamorphosis—like a caterpillar searching for the possibility to unfold into a butterfly. What begins in isolation, with each individual seemingly trapped within their own inner reality, slowly opens toward liberation, presence, and the possibility of genuine connection.
Through an in-depth creative process, choreographers Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia investigate how the body responds to internal and external impulses. Movement becomes a tool for entering beneath the visible surface and discovering new physical states, movement thresholds, and ways of organizing the body that emerge directly from the emotional and conceptual landscape of the work.
Rather than offering a linear narrative, Within invites the audience into a physical and emotional experience—a space for reflection on identity, vulnerability, transformation, and our relationship with ourselves. The body becomes both a mirror and a landscape of inner experience, carrying what cannot always be expressed through words.
Within ultimately asks what it means to remain connected to oneself in a world that constantly pulls our attention outward—and whether, by confronting what lies within, we can find the possibility to transform, open ourselves, and move beyond our own internal boundaries.
The contemporary dance company MN Dance Company premiered Within – at the SNG Nova Gorica Theatre.
By Breda Pahor
NOVA GORICA – Contemporary dance and the inner exploration of the human being: this is the perspective through which the dance poetics of MN Dance Company can be understood. Over recent years, the company has developed significantly in artistic quality and established itself on a broader stage. One could even say on a European level, as the Gorica-based company was among the standout participants in the programme of the European Capital of Culture – GO! 2025.
The artistic vision, both conceptually and technically, is naturally guided by the company’s founders and current artistic directors, Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia. Together they create choreographies in which they also perform.
Clean and Elegant
MN Dance Company develops a contemporary dance language that does not usually tell a conventional story but instead explores emotional atmospheres and the emotional experiences of both performers and audience members.
The seven performers, including the leading choreographic duo themselves, delve in Within into the exploration of human intimacy. Against a soundscape that was more sonic than musical in the traditional sense (the entire score was pre-recorded), the dancers sought to portray an individual’s search for personal essence, closeness and distance from others, the desire for personal freedom and independence, while at the same time longing for intimate connection.
Love, understood as an expression of personal growth and taking responsibility for another person—while never completely abandoning the desire to preserve one’s own freedom despite possible consequences—plays a central role.
Particularly expressive was the duet performed by the two choreographers, which was also among the most refined moments of the evening from a dance perspective.
Into the quietness of this intimate experience, however, Rynia and Bremec Rynia introduce English-language songs. As is often the case in their work, one of the performers—in this instance a female dancer—sings a song, or part of one, live into a microphone. Dance and movement alone, it seems, do not express everything the creators wish to communicate.
Although far less than in Borderless Body, the performance created for GO! 2025, references again emerge to an increasingly technology-driven world and humanity’s place within it. The exploration of personal intimacy therefore also becomes an examination of contemporary ways of living. A person must first come to know themselves in order to confront the outside world, which, translated into the language of dance, appears as a relationship with space.
As is characteristic of the choreographic partnership of Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia, the choreography is clean and elegant, and the performance equally so.
The stage design also deserves brief mention, although contemporary dance productions generally employ minimal scenography. The stage was darkened, while seven standing lights outlined a semicircle. Before the performance began, the dancers were enclosed within a circular structure—they were literally within.
MN Dance Company has once again demonstrated its artistic creativity and its maturity as both choreographers and performers.
Primorski dnevnik
Breda Pahor, Primorski dnevnik / 1. Jul 2026
WITHIN
Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec Rynia
Premiere
27 June 2026
SNG Nova Gorica
Production:
MN Dance Company
Co-production:
SNG Nova Gorica
Creators:
Choreography, visual concept and music selection: Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec Rynia
Light designer: Matjaž Bajc
Sound designer: Stojan Nemec
Dancers: Luka Vodopivec, Rebecca Granzotto, Petra Seruga, David Micu, Anneya Gelis, Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec Rynia
Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia
Rebecca Granzotto
David Micu
Anneya Gelis
Luka Vodopivec
Nastja Bremec Rynia
Petra Seruga
Michal Rynia
The contemporary dance company MN Dance Company premiered Within – at the SNG Nova Gorica Theatre.
By Breda Pahor
NOVA GORICA – Contemporary dance and the inner exploration of the human being: this is the perspective through which the dance poetics of MN Dance Company can be understood. Over recent years, the company has developed significantly in artistic quality and established itself on a broader stage. One could even say on a European level, as the Gorica-based company was among the standout participants in the programme of the European Capital of Culture – GO! 2025.
The artistic vision, both conceptually and technically, is naturally guided by the company’s founders and current artistic directors, Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia. Together they create choreographies in which they also perform.
Clean and Elegant
MN Dance Company develops a contemporary dance language that does not usually tell a conventional story but instead explores emotional atmospheres and the emotional experiences of both performers and audience members.
The seven performers, including the leading choreographic duo themselves, delve in Within into the exploration of human intimacy. Against a soundscape that was more sonic than musical in the traditional sense (the entire score was pre-recorded), the dancers sought to portray an individual’s search for personal essence, closeness and distance from others, the desire for personal freedom and independence, while at the same time longing for intimate connection.
Love, understood as an expression of personal growth and taking responsibility for another person—while never completely abandoning the desire to preserve one’s own freedom despite possible consequences—plays a central role.
Particularly expressive was the duet performed by the two choreographers, which was also among the most refined moments of the evening from a dance perspective.
Into the quietness of this intimate experience, however, Rynia and Bremec Rynia introduce English-language songs. As is often the case in their work, one of the performers—in this instance a female dancer—sings a song, or part of one, live into a microphone. Dance and movement alone, it seems, do not express everything the creators wish to communicate.
Although far less than in Borderless Body, the performance created for GO! 2025, references again emerge to an increasingly technology-driven world and humanity’s place within it. The exploration of personal intimacy therefore also becomes an examination of contemporary ways of living. A person must first come to know themselves in order to confront the outside world, which, translated into the language of dance, appears as a relationship with space.
As is characteristic of the choreographic partnership of Michal Rynia and Nastja Bremec Rynia, the choreography is clean and elegant, and the performance equally so.
The stage design also deserves brief mention, although contemporary dance productions generally employ minimal scenography. The stage was darkened, while seven standing lights outlined a semicircle. Before the performance began, the dancers were enclosed within a circular structure—they were literally within.
MN Dance Company has once again demonstrated its artistic creativity and its maturity as both choreographers and performers.
Primorski dnevnik
Breda Pahor, Primorski dnevnik / 1. Jul 2026
