residency Michael Shapira in Belgrade

STATION Service for contemporary dance has organized this Wild Card residential programme in the frame of the project Life Long Burning through the support of Culture Programme and in the slot exchange with Cullberg Ballet, Stockholm, Sweden. Proposed by Cullberg Ballet, Michael Shapira (IL/SE), Berlin based choreographer, has realized a two-week residency in Belgrade, which resulted in a research presentation «Ma Nishtana» (https://vimeo.com/97418245) and a workshop for the students of the Belgrade Ballet Highschool.

The working space for the residency was the Cultural Centre REX, which hosted both the performance and the workshop. Michael Shapira's research was conducted with the help of the Jewish Community in Belgrade, which later resulted in four visitors from the community and their interest in both Station and Michael as an artist.

Since the presentation included the audience being seated around a dining table, there were 22 people attending. The presentation was announced through several communication channels: Station's mailing list and Facebook page, two other mailing lists of influential independent organisations involved in contemporary performing arts (NKSS and SeeCult), the mailing list and Facebook page of the Belgrade Ballet Highschool, the Association of Ballet Artists of Serbia, Cultural Centre REX's mailing list and Facebook and through direct contacting of the professors in Belgrade Ballet Highschool. The presentation was held on April 17, 2014.

The workshop was conducted through two two-hour blocks: introduction to floor work for the non-dancers and the second part which was more focused on the application of the knowledge acquired. The workshop was also very well attended since there were 17 people, most of which were the audience of the presentation, of the previous day. Since Station tries to engage students from the Ballet highschool, we consider it a success that most of the attendees were students who expressed interest in contemporary dance and further, non-formal education.