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DANCE LIKE NOBODY’S WATCHING: NEW YEAR’S EVE EVE LO - FI MARATHON
Španski Borci Cultural Centre
Premiere: 29 Decembre 2024
Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: New Year’s Eve Eve Lo-Fi Marathon was born out of an interest in the artistic work of colleagues, from a need to confront different dance expressions, and from the desire to see together what might emerge from such a dialogue. Our first marathon took place over 24 hours in the final days of December at the Španski Borci Cultural Centre. Most of the invited artists were from Slovenia, with several coming from other European countries (Germany, Sweden, France, Serbia, Austria), as well as three from Canada. The marathon was curated and organized by Jana Jevtović, Bojana Robinson, and DISKOlektiv.
The event was conceived as a sequence of 30 dance and choreographic contributions of varying durations – some as short as 15 minutes, others lasting up to 2 hours – unfolding over the course of 24 hours at a single location. More than 35 artists took part in the marathon with a wide range of proposals. Some shared finished performances or excerpts from them; others presented parts of their working process; some introduced their artistic research or a newly published book; others adapted an older work specifically for this occasion; and still others appeared intermittently with dance propositions throughout the day and night. The works were presented in various spaces of the Španski Borci Cultural Centre, including the main stage, the studios, the gallery, the corridors, and the bar.
The marathon was intended as a space for spending time together through our diverse dance practices: to share dance with one another, to talk about it, to rest generously, and to bid a collective farewell to 2024.
There’s
a mistake attached to the notion of the marathon. Nowadays, it seems
almost synonymous with something excessively long, but what about
Pheidippides, the messenger, and what he carried? The defining feature
that elevates a marathon is not its length; it is the urgency of
forwarding a message. Urgent to the extent that it is worth dying for,
even and perhaps precisely because the battle is already over.
Perhaps
a detail, but an important one. Pheidippides picked up speed, endured,
and fulfilled his sprint before it became known as a marathon. He ran
out of conviction, even devotion. Though it is difficult to decipher
whether his dedication was to the destination or the journey, to
delivering the message or to the act of running itself. Let us hope it
was both, and equally so.
The marathon undertaken by Jana, Bojana,
and Gregor of NDA was long, very long, but its underlying imaginary was
to deliver a message, shared through a corresponding devotion to dance,
which together indefinitely postponed its becoming “too long.” Now, as
we know, in that together, there is a word that conjoins the political
urgency of delivering a message and the commitment to dance, and that
word is to stand united.
Text: Mårten Spångberg