20 March – 31 May 2025, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana (+MSUM)

Participants:
Dalija Aćin Thelander, Dragana Alfirević, Nela Antonović, BADco., Sandra Banić Naumovski, selma banich, 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, Matija Ferlin, Siniša Eftimov, Aleksandar Georgiev, Igor Grubić, Viktorija Ilioska, Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld, Ister Teatar, Mirjana Dragana Janeček, Filip Jovanovski, Jelena Jović, Jasna Knez, Minka Veselič Kološa, Živa Kraigher, Ana Kreitmeyer, Sanja Krsmanović-Tasić, Ivana Kocevska, Bara Kolenc & Atej Tutta, Igor Koruga, Marko Košnik / Egon March Institute, Iztok Kovač & Sašo Podgoršek, Marjana Krajač, Ema Kugler, Maga Magazinović, Ana Maletić / Studio Contemporary Dance Company, Vera Maletić, Smiljana Mandukić, Barbara Matijević, Marko Milić, Borut Šeparović / Montažstroj, Matjaž Mrak & Urša Rupnik, Dušan Murić, Irma Omerzo, Marta Paulin - Brina, Marko Peljhan / Projekt Atol, Dance Theater Ljubljana, PMG Collective, Marta Popivoda, Sonja Pregrad, Jovana Rakić Kiselčić, Teja Reba, Vlado Repnik & Theatre VR, Željka Sančanin, Mira Sanjina, Iva Nerina Sibila, Žorž Skrigin, Isidora Stanišić, Jelena Šantić, Katja Šimunić, Igor Štromajer & Bojana Kunst, Iskra Shukarova, Anđelija Todorović, Trafik, Slobodan Unkovski, Zrinka Užbinec, Sonja Vukićević, Ljiljana Zagorac, Dragan Živadinov, Marko Mlačnik & Vadim Fiškin  / Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung, Nataša Živković, and others.

Curators: Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Rok Vevar and Jasmina Založnik in collaboration with Slavcho Dimitrov, Milica Ivić, Tea Kantoci
Exhibition designer: Siniša Ilić
Exhibition production: Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija in collaboration with Moderna galerija and in partnership with the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia and the International Centre of Graphic Arts

The exhibition Dance, Resistance, (Un)Working – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After is the result of many years of work in the fields of archiving and historicizing contemporary dance in art/cultural spaces in the former Yugoslav republics by the partners in the Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy (NDA Slovenia, Ljubljana; NDA Croatia, Zagreb; Stanica, Belgrade; Lokomotiva, Skopje). The work started over a decade ago in Ljubljana with the founding of the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive (NDA Slovenia, Moderna galerija), and expanded within the NDA network through collaborations with partners in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Croatia. It further evolved through various European projects, including “The (Non)Aligned Movements” project, which enabled staging the first edition of the exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in late 2024 in the frame of the Life Long Burning Choreographic Convention 2024, the publication of the Bodies of Dance – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After volume, and the launching of the NADA digital contemporary dance database.

Not intended as some final act or a one-off presentation of materials, the exhibition constitutes a part of a continuous process, a step towards curatorial articulations of a variety of thematic focal points definable and accessible through this archival network. The exhibition is one of the versions of an ever-changing work-in-progress, illuminating the materials and the relationships among them in the gradual growth of the archive. It has more potentialities than conclusions, and is the result of several methodological decisions underpinned by the fact that the contexts represented by the partners involved in the work are both similar and quite distinct.

The partners think of the archive as a living and evolving form of public dance time, which is (or can be) performed as an intersection of numerous spaces, memories, knowledge, history, presence, future, friendships, strategies, politics, resistance, flexibility, love, hostility, silence, protests, disagreements, sociability, association, and many other things embodied, recorded, maintained, and produced by dance through forms of imagination. With the aid of the archive of dance, the partners in the project reflect on the aesthetic that separates their dance contexts, limiting them primarily to theatrical products and kinetic differences that have never been focal to their shared interests. Instead, they have focused their efforts on the field of dance closely linked to art, culture, society and politics from the very beginning. In addition to the aesthetic aspect, the field of dance-related activity – or rather, work – seems highly inclusive, comprehensive, solidary, demanding, and collective. Dance, Resistance, (Un)Working – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After broaches themes of (1) choreographing feminism, gender, and desire as forms of body politics; (2) formations, relations, and interventions as forms of community associations; (3) borderline and transgressive dance in media beyond the physical; and (4) a general perspective of dance in defiance.

Through the presented works, the curators explore the concept of dance (and choreography) as an extended practice. They also address issues related to processuality, which is seen as the socio-political ontology of dance practices. The movement, representations, relations, and arrangements of bodies are scenes of resistance undermining and abolishing operational logic (i.e., the production of a planned, calculated, measured finished product, meaning, or narrative, including the choreography of bodies according to a movement notation in accordance with the logic of origin/fate, nature/necessity, essence/telos). In this way, dance bodies become a means without an end, processes and gestures in-becoming, revealing, rather than some hidden, transcendental meaning, their own incessant rearrangements, pauses, resistances, extremes, and re-materializations or the worlds they embody both in the performance and the relationships they are in. In this way, dancing bodies undermine political regimes and the operative logic in territorial contexts of the former Yugoslavia, since they cross borders, move through geopolitically charged areas, push the limits of physical and gender norms, pulsate in the untamable rhythm of desire, materialize new collective forms of coexistence, and challenge the rules of aesthetics and its divisions.

The exhibition Dance, Resistance, (Un)Working aims to present contemporary dance that addresses the potentialities and materiality of the body, deriving from its interactions with the spheres of politics, society, economy, the environment and others. The body is in a state of perpetual potentiality – it is an agonistic body, redefining itself and evolving in relation to others (and also itself).

The first edition of the exhibition was staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. The Ljubljana edition is modified and includes the installation Thirty Years of Beauty, Sweat, and Blisters, which commemorates the thirty years of the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia, and video interviews and archival and research materials and publications kept by the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive. It presents the three decades of work of the Association and the development of – and collective efforts and achievements in – contemporary dance.

Digital dance database NADA
On (Non)Aligned Movements project

On 1 January 2025, the project partners entered a new stage of collective work in collaboration with European partners: the European Research Executive Agency awarded them funding for the project “DanceMap: Innovation Pathways and Policies to Promote European Dance Heritage at Home and Abroad” under the HORIZON Innovation Actions Grant program.

Additional Credits:
Researchers: Slavcho Dimitrov, Milica Ivić, Tea Kantoci, Igor Koruga, Iva Nerina Sibila, Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Rok Vevar, Jasmina Založnik
Research support in Croatia: Maja Đurinović

Production and organization: Jasmina Založnik
Graphic design: Gaja Madžarevič
Translations: Urban Belina, Tamara Soban
Proofreading: Jana Jevtović
Organizational support: Sanja Kuveljić Bandić, Mojca Prešern Levstek
Technical set-up: Zoran Grabarac, Tomaž Kučer

This exhibition is the closing phase of the (Non)Aligned Movements project of Creative Europe, created by the Nomad Dance Academy network with its partners: Station (Beograd), Lokomotiva (Skopje), Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija (Ljubljana), Nomad Dance Academy Croatia (Zagreb), Object of Dance/Antisezona (Zagreb), Tanzfabrik Berlin.

Guided Tour through the exhibition in Zagreb: 

LOGOTIPI:
NOMAD, NAM
NDA Slovenija, Stanica, Lokomotiva, NDA Hrvatska, Objekt plesa, Tanzfabrik Berlin
MG+MSUM, DSPS, MGLC

Ljubljana exhibition transfer is supported by:
LLB3 + Creative Europe, DanceMap +Horizon EU, Ministry for Culture RS, Ministry for Public Affair, Municipality of Ljubljana