...maska / AUTONOMY TO DANCE
More about the book >>
Editor-in-chief: Amelia Kraigher
Executive editor: Dr. Andreja Kopač
Published by: Maska, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia
Contributing authors: Slavčo Dimitrov, Milica Ivić, Ivana Ivković, Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Igor Koruga, Iva Nerina Sibila, Katja Šimunić, Rok Vevar, Jasmina Založnik
Translations: Polona Glavan, Katja Kosi, Julija Micova, Ivana Ostojčić, Nenad Tomović
Slovenian language editing: Tatjana Capuder, Mojca Hudolin
English language editing: Eric Dean Scott
Design and layout: Ajdin Bašić, Iztok Kham
With financial support from the Slovenian Book Agency and Dance On, Pass On, Dream On (within the framework of the Creative Europe programme).
Volume XXXII, No. 183–184 (Summer–Autumn 2017)
ISSN 1318-0509
Driven by the desire 'to create one's own contemporary dance archive where none exists,' this issue of Maska offers an in-depth, re-contextualized insight into the situation in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Despite different starting points for archiving and historicizing, as well as different methods and styles of writing, all contributions share a common feature: they contain a historical and contextual account of the process by which contemporary dance actually 'liberated' itself either from the field of theatre, ballet, institutions, or wider society, and became an autonomous art form, while at the same time constantly remaining an integral part of broader social movements and changes brought about by the 1960s, 1980s, or 1990s.
Extensive articles (as pioneering works) thus reveal the contexts of North Macedonia (Slavčo Dimitrov & Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski), Serbia (Milica Ivić & Igor Koruga), Slovenia (Rok Vevar & Jasmina Založnik), and Croatia (Ivana Ivković, Iva Nerina Sibila, Katja Šimunić).
In this context, the author of the editorial, Rok Vevar, wrote: 'I believe that the current work of the Balkan NDA network and the NDI project – including the archiving of choreographic practices in the Balkans, or perhaps especially because of it /…/ – is a distinct heir to the shared Yugoslav artistic, cultural, social, and political space, and that the process of identities and differences is an opportunity for various forms of continuing this inspiring cultural context by other means and with other possibilities. Our work in the context of the post-Yugoslav and post-socialist experience aims to be inter- and translocal, whereby we see potential in the reconsideration of certain demonized concepts of the SFRY [Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], such as self-management and, in a different form, cultural unitarism. In the politically, socially, culturally, and artistically eroded contexts of the republics of the former Yugoslavia, after they surrendered with open arms to neoliberal ideology in the post-socialist period, I see this as a productive and even subversive act.'
Managing Editor: Andreja Kopač"