November 20, 2024 – February 23, 2025

Exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

by Nomad Dance Academy – (Non)Aligned Movements

 

Chief curators: Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Rok Vevar

Co-curators: Slavcho Dimitrov, Milica Ivić, Tea Kantoci, Jasmina Založnik

Curatorial support: Jasna Jakšić

Design of the exhibition: Siniša Ilić

Graphic design: Andrej Dolinka

Producer: Marijana Cvetković

Executive producer: Ana Letunić

Researchers: Slavcho Dimitrov, Milica Ivić, Tea Kantoci, Igor Koruga, Iva Nerina Sibila, Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Rok Vevar, Jasmina Založnik

Artists and collectives: Dalija Aćin Thelander, Dragana Alfirević, Nela Antonović, BADco., Sandra Banić Naumovski, selma banich, Matjaž Berger, Betontanc, Bitef Dance Company, DDT Dance Company, Dušan Broćić, Milana Broš / KASP, Dragana Bulut, Valentina Čabro, Boris Čakširan, Darío Baretto Damas, Katja Delak, Maja Delak, Goran Devide / Borghesia, Ana Dubljević, Čarni Đerić, EN-KNAP, Federacija, Feminalz, Matija Ferlin, Forum for New Dance, Siniša Eftimov, Aleksandar Georgiev, Gledališče Pekarna/Pekarna Theatre, Gledališče Pupilije Ferkeverk/Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre, Igor Grubić, Viktorija Ilioska, Ister Teatar, Mirjana Dragana Janeček, Filip Jovanovski, Jelena Jović, Jasna Knez, Minka Veselič Kološa, Živa Kraigher, Ana Kreitmeyer, Sanja Krsmanović-Tasić, Ivana Kocevska, Bara Kolanc & Atej Tutta, Koreodrama, Igor Koruga, Marko Košnik and Institute Egon March, Iztok Kovač and Sašo Podgoršek, Marjana Krajač, Ema Kugler, Ana Maletić / Studio Contemporary Dance Company, Maga Magazinović, Dubravka Maletić, Vera Maletić, Smiljana Mandukić, Barbara Matijević, Nina Meško & Tanja Lažetić, Marko Milić, Bojana Mladenović, Montažstroj, Matjaž Mrak and Urša Rupnik, Dušan Murić, NEUT, Irma Omerzo, Tatjana Pajovć, Marta Paulin Brina, Marko Peljhan and Project Atol, Plesni teater Ljubljana/Dance Theatre Ljubljana, PMG Kolektiv, Marta Popivoda, Praktikabl, Sonja Pregrad, Jovana Rakić, Teja Reba, Rebis, Vlado Repnik and Theatre VR, Željka Sančanin, Mira Sanjina, Iva Nerina Sibila, Signum, Skopje Dance Theatre, Žorž Skrigin, Isidora Stanišić, Katarina Stojkov Slijepčević, Jelena Šantić, Katja Šimunić, Igor Štromajer and Bojana Kunst, Iskra Shukarova, Ljiljana Tasić, Anđelija Todorović, Trafik, Slobodan Unkovski, Zrinka Užbinec, Sonja Vukićević, Ljiljana Zagorac, Alex Zain, Dragan Živadinov, Marko Mlačnik and Vadim Fiškin, Nataša Živković

Research support: Maja Đurinović

Local production: Emilija Čočkova (Skopje), Marijana Cvetković (Belgrade), Jasmina Založnik and Mojca Prešern Levstek (Ljubljana), Aleksandra Janeva (Zagreb)

Proofreading: Jana Jevtović, Ivana Ostojčić

Translation: Ivana Ostojčić, Antonio Oštarić, Petra Pugar 

Editing: Ivor Glavaš

Production collaborators: Nevena Delić, Olivera Kecojević, Gjurgjica Hristovska, Zorica Zafirovska, Sindri Uču, Ana Ranković, Ivana Andjelković

Technical support: Dalibor Cicvara, Mirjana Grab, Renato Mihaljenović, Aleksandar Milošević, Ivan Tudek, Filip Zima, Boris Butorac

PR: Monika Husar, KomunikArt

 

 

This exhibition will perform long-term research on developing the digital archive of contemporary dance and the performing arts of the post-Yugoslav region. Because that is an ongoing process, we do not think of this exhibition as a final act or actualization of the material, but as one step towards sharing the relations we are building with the materials. We are showing it as a (un)working material, as a research space that is in its potentiality, not being there yet, or finished.

We consider the archive as a living and developing temporality that is (can be) performed as the intersection of pluralities of space(s), memory, working materials, a body of knowledge, history, presence, future, friends(hips), policies, politics, resistance, resilience, love, enemies, silence, protests, dissonances, socialities, togethering, and much more that dance preserves, holds, produces as imagination and perspective.

Therefore, this exhibition is one way of (un)working, reading, and sharing those intersections which are in front of us, with us at the moment. We think through this archive of the art of dance that the realm of aesthetics separates our dance contexts and reduces them mostly to theater products and kinetic differences which have never been our case of common interests. Our collaboration and interest have always been in the dance field which informs us about the arts, culture, society, and politics.

Besides mere aesthetics, we find the realm of dance work (labor) more inclusive, broader, solidary, common, and challenging. Dancing, Resisting, (Un)working – Aspects of Dance as a Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After proposes the topics of (1) choreographing feminism, gender and desires (2) formations, relations, and interventions (3) bordering and transgressing dance.

Through this exhibition we are exploring the extended notion of dance (and choreography) that could be considered as an (artistic) function, methodology, or practice, dealing with the (working) conditions of creating, composing, constructing, producing, presenting, or performing different presences, absences or representations of the human body (and its actions) as well as traces and indications that contain them. It considers the art of dance as a system of (artistic) labor. We are interested in considering the work in dance and of dance on the levels of different systemic elements: education, creation, production, perception, and reception as well as theorization, historicization, and archiving.

However, we also tackle the problematics of unworking, proposing it as the socio-political ontology of dance practices. Bodies’ movements, presentations, relations, and configurations become a locus of resistance that undermines and undoes the logic of operativity, that is to say, the production of planned, calculated, measured, final product/meaning/narrative, or the scored choreographies of bodies in accordance to the logic of origin/destiny, nature/necessity, essence/telos. In this way, dance bodies become means without ends, ongoing processes, and gestures that signify not a hidden or transcendent sense, but their ongoing reconfigurations, becomings, resistances, excesses, and rematerializations, and the worlds they enact performatively and relationaly. Dancing bodies thus shatter the political regimes and logics of operativity in (post) Yugoslav contexts, by crossing borders, traveling through geopolitically marked territories, pushing the boundaries of bodily and gendered norms, moving with the unruly pulses of desire, materialising new collective forms of co-existence, and challenging the codes of aesthetics and its divisions.

With this exhibition we are interested to communicate the contemporary dance that engages with the potentiality of the body and its materiality, stemming from its interactions with the political, social, economic, environmental, and other realms. The body exists in a state of continual potentiality, it is an agonistic body redefining and redeveloping through relations (including with itself).

Distancing from the exclusive realm of aesthetics, we open up the possibilities to include in our exhibition corpus also the work that is situational, relational, contextual, potential, and emerging: (1) the constructive procedures of bodies in studios and schools, collectives and collaborations, (2) ways of thinking traced in documents instead of finished works, (3) ways of reacting, practicing, doing things instead of fixed procedures or forms, (4) reflective writing and traces of work(ing), (5) etc. Dance historian and theoretician Laurence Louppe in her “Poetics of Contemporary Dance” (1997, 2004) writes that the whole notion of ‘dance work’ has been always much too focused on the finished proscenium works instead of the whole range of labor connected to it that in many cases stays completely invisible. Instead of thinking of dance merely in the realm of poiesis (making), we include thinking (theoria) and doing (praxis) as well: it is a tendency to recognize different ranges of systemic elements that form the field of the art of dance. What we are doing in this exhibition is recognizing and affirming the (social) labor in dance that in some cases stays invisible and unrecognized although it is of great importance for the whole system and development of dance in our region.

Chief curators: Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski and Rok Vevar

 

This exhibition is part of the (Non)Aligned Movements project, a collaborative work of the Nomad Dance Academy and its partners: Station Service for Contemporary Dance (Belgrade), Lokomotiva Center for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture (Skopje), Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia (Ljubljana), Nomad Dance Academy Croatia (Zagreb), Object of Dance/Antiszona (Zagreb), and Tanzfabrik Berlin.

Supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the City of Ljubljana, the Ministry of Public Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, the City of Skopje, Goethe Institute, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, Culture for Democracy and Hartefakt Fund

Partner: Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

Director: Vesna Meštrić

Support: The City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia