The story about the 11th Infant gathers its contents from the key trends in the creators’ divergent search through new theatre as well as from interfering influences of the artistic forms that exist on the fringes. One of the abundant sources in that respect is definitely the art of performance. Significant and personalized forms of expression have been taken over by the contemporary art of performance. So this kind of theatre has been adopting and using those forms as an innovating model, giving them completely unique dimensions of aesthetics and expression. Diverse influences can be found on several levels. The first and elementary level is reflected in its treatment of time. In contrast to the fictitious world of the theatre and its unrealistic treatment of time, artistic performance is built on the basis of real time and space, and in addition, it accepts the physical features of the given environment as relevant factors. The second point of importance is that the performance does not usually take place on a stage – a place quite determining for classical theatre, with the exception of street and ambient theatre as well as some less developed theatrical paraphenomena. The third letter of difference tells us that the human body has become a key processing material, but at the same time it represents a line of defense for human integrity, especially from the ideological-metaphysical cancellations and totalitarian erasure. And finally, innovation brought about by the expressive means of performers themselves should be mentioned as one of the essential factors. They, unlike actors, use subjects and means of expression taken from their own world. So a performer is not an intermediary between the text and director, but is a complete author him or herself
     The program of this year’s Infant will attempt to point at, through several basic aspects (plays, lectures and performances), the diverse and, in a creative sense, rich influence that the performance has on the new theatre.

     The second line of the festival is made up of different kinds of dance theatre. Just as the urge that drives the creators of the new theatre has revealed and patented a number of expressive forms, the dance theatre scene has changed and diverged significantly over the last few years, so we can rightfully talk about a real boom of an almost uncountable number of original approaches. It is incomprehensible how far the researches have gone, but also how much they have drifted apart. They go from the shows that stay within the classical dance syntax, to those that deconstruct it completely and sometimes even colour it with elements, colors and feelings that have not been present in the dance theatre before – with irony, deconstruction, technological aids, martial arts elements or something else. All of these together give us a brand new and totally qualitatively different image of dance theatre. Even a shy change to the dance scene of our country is apparent, probably under the influence of the radical changes in Europe. This postmodern broken image of the ‘dance’ quest successfully incorporates a multitude of technological findings, showing again and again that video as a medium received not only a new strategic role but a new expressive power as well.

      The third, (in)visible line of the program consists of the group of plays that, conditionally speaking, stay in the theatrical language canon, but brings up a new sensitivity, energy and approach. Mainly dealing with ’small’, human issues and problems, the authors of these plays are safe, on one hand, because they deal with problems close to everyone, but on the other, they stand exposed , because they have to talk about them in an innovative, special and poetically unique way.

     Several new aspects, aside from the balanced main program, should trace a different aura of the festival: announcing performances of Inf(ant)fusion, the comeback of the international symposium and the competitive spirit of the festival. There is a special role, as well as attention, that the artistic performances deserve, because in addition to acknowledging some aspects of its concept they should also point out the quality of the performance in our country. Just like the concerts, exhibitions, lectures, interventions...