Remote Residency Dance till the new dawn

RESIDENCY // “Dance till the new dawn“ – Dance Research & Resistance Project, a collaboration project by Bojan Djordjev, Siniša Ilić, Igor Koruga, Mirjana Dragosavljević and Marijana Cvetković

June-August 2021

Art, Politics, Institution, Body program // Creative Crossroads - Life Long Burning

The artistic residency was planned to be in the summer 2021 in Skopje. Due to the Covid-19 some of the artists from the team could not travel to Skopje, which necessitated a very quick reorganization. After several online meetings with the team and the co-partner Lokomotiva, Skopje, we made the general decision to realize the residence as remote residency.

The remote residency “Dance till the new dawn“ – Dance Research & Resistance Project, taking place between June and August 2021 in Belgrade,  is collaboration project developed as part of Lokomotiva’s Art, Politics, Institution, Body program, within the Creative Crossroads program of the Life Long Burning Project.

The project’s starting point is in the iconic images of Yugoslav partisan dancer Marta Paulin–Brina, dancing in front of thousands of partisan men and women during the WWII in Yugoslavia. In her later diary, she described these events as reinvention of a new art practice in the new social conditions. Her dance was supposed to become part of the people’s struggle, as well as a practice acquired as a right and accessed by this collective subjectivity.

Starting from this note, the research will unfold in the following directions:

-       reviewing and bringing forward diverse knowledge related to the guerrilla/partisan struggles of the 20th century, as a powerful way of antifascist and anti-imperialist struggle,

-       using the partisan logic of ideological precision that enables navigation and orientation in the public (political) space, dominated by neoliberal policies,

-       working on political literacy as the main weapon for the struggle where one can assess the adversary and choose the battles.

This is a cross-disciplinary project that employs knowledge and capacities of performing arts and choreography, visual arts and photography, humanistic disciplines and contemporary critical theory.

It will bring forward texts, performances, installations, publications and workshops around topics such as collective dance practices, amateurism, dance as resistance, with case studies from Yugoslavia, Europe and the USA.

The residential research deals with topics including Yugoslavian partisans and artists, amateurism, anti-fascist and anti-colonial movements, collectivism in dance and performance as resistance.

The hybrid project will result in one text and a few self-interviews of the members of the group.