How can we work and create at times of increasingly severe crisis?  Angelina Georgieva tells us about the International Choreographic Convention in Timișoara, where the dominating themes were predetermined by this question.

“While the sky is falling over our destiny, can we still celebrate, dance, sing?” This was the leading question during the international meeting Celebrating Trouble, which took place from 4 to 8 October 2023 in Timișoara – the European Capital of Culture of the year, as part of the Choreographic Convention series of the European network for contemporary dance Life Long Burning. The objective of the series is each year different network partners, which include 12 organisations, institutions and forums from Stockholm to Sofia, to carry out professional symposiums to provide a platform for discussing current issues relevant to contemporary dance field. The event in Timișoara was organised by 4Culture – a cultural organisation based in Bucharest, in cooperation with danceWEB from Vienna.

As one of the convention participants stated, the purpose of these events is to gather dancing professionals from different fields and countries and to subject the things they do every day to critical analysis. And today leaves us with the nagging feeling that we live in a world in danger. Thus, the question of how we can continue creating art in the face of the war in Ukraine and the swarming international conflicts and in the context of the rise of far-right populist and conservative movements that threaten the foundations of democracy, is a legitimate one. The Romanian hosts left everyone to interpret the title Celebrating Trouble as they see fit, however, it can still be understood as a call to see crises as an opportunity for renewal, for finding ways of acting by analysing them.

The three panel discussions that were part of the convention focused on topics that define what could be called part of the macro dramaturgy of contemporary stage practices and has direct relevance to their connection with social reality and the potential influence on it. The first panel “Shaping Public Opinions” tried to outline some problematic current processes in the public sphere and how they can be influenced by cultural institutions and artistic practices. The input by Caspar Weimann, a German actor and lecturer and part of onlinetheater.live team, was particularly interesting. He emphasised that internet users’ possibility to create and disseminate content has resulted in a new paradigm where the online environment has already transformed not just into a public sphere, but also into a public space that is more powerful than physical spaces and institutions. Today, internet is the largest theatre – it is an environment where everyone can play multiple roles, even of fictional characters. The main problem is that various countries are imposing their political agenda in an increasingly aggressive manner, turning social media into machines for propaganda, radicalisation and dissemination of far-right ideas that “hack” the public discourse and public opinion. His core belief is that theatre may serve as an emancipating force and he presented some of his artistic and educational digital projects where the instruments of theatre are used to increase digital literacy and critical thinking.

Rok Vevar, a dance historian and curator from Slovenia, made an attempt to provide a more theoretical basis of the conversation by inviting participants to dwell on the definition of opinion itself and how representative public opinion really is. Following Alain Badiou, who opposed opinion to truth, he highlighted that the main function of opinion is to be disseminated, to be spoken, while truth cannot be spoken. He acknowledged the common diagnosis of erosion of publicity today and called for the formation of spaces that go beyond opinion sharing and are spaces of experience, such as cultural events, for example. To this end, he reminded us that public space should be perceived together with public time, with the way society experiences time, as it is part of experience and leaves traces. To the question about the way art could contribute to changing public opinion, Rok Vevar answered he believed in the pedagogical approach, however, he said he rather imagined that educational institutions should create an open space “for the realisation of human potential”.

Regarding the most pertinent question of the convention about the way theatre, as a notion generalising the field of performing arts, reacts to the current crises and conflicts, the organisers demonstrated their response to the war in Ukraine into practice – art can be a shelter, it can be a means of survival and it can also offer a system for support. The event hosted three artists from Ukraine. Svetlana Ovchinnikova (daughter of one of the main figures of contemporary dance in Ukraine – Anton Ovchinnikov, who was a guest at the “Antistatic” festival in Sofia in 2023) presented a selection of short dance movies by Ukrainian artists – Let the Body Speak, while dance artists Rita Lira and (H)anna Kyrychyshyn showed their works created during the two-week residence in Timișoara. All three of them took part in various panel discussions. Regarding the topic about shaping public opinion, Stanislava simply said: In Russia, in addition to massive propaganda, public opinion is also controlled by eliminating people who are disliked by authorities.

The “Theatre as Public Space” panel also touched upon some important aspects. This is an ever-emerging question from the historical avant-garde onward about the potential of theatre to directly affect reality, to unfold critical discourse and to change actual social relationships. Based on his new book The Art of Assembly, German critic and curator Florian Malzacher commented on projects in political theatre from recent years (by artists like Milo Rau, Rimini Protokoll, the creative team Building Conversation, etc.) that bring to theatre formats of different types of political forums, such as climate summits and parliamentary meetings, or a court hearing on creative freedom and censorship, thus transcending the boundaries between art and reality. In the framework of those formats, the spectators become both participants and performers, they give rise to temporary communities and they have the political potential of turning into an environment of trying out, analysing and even re-inventing forms of co-existence and interaction as well as relating to topics affecting community living. In this way, they transform theatre into a public space, except that the tension between the real and the fictional or symbolic always remains. In her presentation, theatre practitioner and author Edit Kaldor (Hungary/The Netherlands) questioned the identification of theatre as a public space, i.e. a space that is open to everyone, that is uncontrolled, with non-hierarchical relationships, etc. And with that, she caused some slight terminological confusion. “Let’s proclaim that theatres are private spaces, then!”, provoked her director Enkidu Khaled from the audience, which was rather ungrounded, because there is a difference between public space and a public institution, such as state- and municipality-subsidised theatres, delegating the right to be managed to a managing team based on certain rules. The discussion moderated by Simone Willeit from “Uferstudios” centre for contemporary dance in Berlin focused on the question about the functionality of theatre and its effectiveness in actually influencing society. Different visions and diverse equally valid positions clashed in this discussion. While Edit Kaldor insisted that theatre is not functional, there is no direct benefit thereof and it is primarily a space for contemplation, Florian Malzacher stressed that it is the idea about the uselessness of theatre the wave in political theatre over the past 20 years reacts to by continuously seeking to re-negotiate its role in society. “Art can be useful, however, it is important not to instrumentalise it,” he emphasised. Claudia Bosse, choreographer and director (Austria/Germany), also joined the panel and gave a very specific answer to that question, sharing that for her, the function of art is to use its means to offer aesthetic articulation that creates different realities and is capable of undermining the functionality artists are continuously required to legitimate their work with. Art has the power to reshape the way of thinking and the relations of power we are embedded in. At the same time, she advocated its right to be completely useless, while the role of the institutions is to provide the necessary time, space and support for the artists. Dance maker Arkadi Zaides (Belgium), who works primarily in the field of documentary performance, stated he was interested in practices capable of making performing arts useful and functional, however, in a rather specific sense of the words. The artistic programme of the Choreographic Convention featured his performance “Necropolis”, for which he had made a research about emigrants and refugees who lost their lives on their way to Europe, thus contributing to the development of actual documentation about them.

The final panel combined, rather clumsily, several levels of speaking about “Art as a Way of Survival” as its title suggested. Mihaela Michailov, a Romanian playwright and theatre critic, described the situation of contemporary independent artists as one where they are subject to radical exhaustion from a dysfunctional system. While the artists’ driving force is passion for art, competition, the need to maintain visibility and economic uncertainty put them in a vicious circle of endless project applications and reports and continuous adjustment to new conditions, which ultimately puts their physical and mental health at risk. Using Mark Fisher’s essay “Capitalist Realism”, Mihaela Michailov calls for re-politicisation of mental health in the context of the independent cultural sector because “the system makes you sick”.
Being well familiar with the way this sector works and recognising many of the situations described by the presenter, I felt a wall rise within me against the speculative way of speaking that presented ideological arguments as facts. My opposition was mostly to presenting the artist as a victim. What happened to the own agency, to the individual choices and responsibilities? Wouldn’t it be more constructive to name the actual problems of the system, such as limited budgets and over-bureacuratisation, for example? I did agree with Mihaela Michailov, however, that no “survival” is necessary in this context of “radical exhaustion”, as far as survival is related to the preservation of some status quo. She saw the solutions in the emergence of a “new paradigm of both individual and collective care and empathy”, where the new practices and discourses are yet to be invented.

To some extent, the panel intended to introduce the international guests in the audience to the situation in other countries outside the European Union, in vulnerable regions, such as Moldova, which the visual artist and performer Vladimir Us talked about. In the discussion that followed, Rita Lira, Ana Kurucusun and Enkidu Khaled, who fled to Belgium from the war in Iraq, shared their experience as artists whose occupation and work actually became a means of survival. Khaled’s very emotional and interesting story revealed that the main choice he had made for himself was not to be part of violence and this is how he departed for Brussels, where the scene accepted him. “This is the best place to make art. I could criticise their system from morning to night and I do so on the spot, however, at the same time I admit that Brussels offers very good conditions for an artist and people are extremely open.” Gradually, he found his own approach to performing in such a way, so that he can express himself and at the same time attract the interest of the extremely diverse audience. (H)anna Kyrychyshyn is a physical artist and therapist and she shared that for her, art is currently a way to overcome the trauma from the war in her homeland. After Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, Rita Lira found an opportunity to live, work and study in Paris. She spoke about the extraordinary support Ukrainian artists received from the international community, which provided residences, various work opportunities and platforms for performing. Yet, the question about what can still be done for artists in zones of war and conflict resonated very strongly. The idea to support initiatives for collecting weapons gave rise to mixed reactions and this is probably something we should demand from our governments. Rita pointed out that there is an increasing need for festivals to be more sensitive to these issues and to refrain from planning common events with the participation of artists from countries in conflict. The question whether art can help re-negotiate these conflicts at another level still remains open.

I am not sure whether all these particularly complicated questions match the “Celebrating Trouble” slogan. It gives me the feeling of both downfall and hope. However, meetings and discussions of the “troubles of today”, for reflection and coming to solutions aimed at a better future are surely needed.

The next Choreographic Convention event will take place in November 2024 in Zagreb, Croatia, under the slogan “Bodies in the Free Fall”.

Choreographic Convention is part of the Life Long Burning (LLB3) – Futures Lost and Found project funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU.

The article is written with financial support of the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria under the Creative Europe grants programme.

The article is originally published in Bulgarian on dancemag.eu and in Dance Magazine, nr.6/2024, Bulgaria.