Photographers: Urška Boljkovac, Dalija Aćin Thelander, Teodora Simova

ABOUT NOMAD DANCE ACADEMY SLOVENIA

Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia is an association that focuses its work primarily on the developmental and research aspects of contemporary dance in the Republic of Slovenia, in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and in a broader international context. Based on an expanded understanding of contemporary dance, we operate in the fields of contemporary dance production; festival, exhibition, and program curating; theorization, archiving, and historiography of contemporary dance; publishing; as well as advocacy and the active co-creation of policies in the field.

The association is oriented toward collective work, relational creation, and the production of art and culture that acts in a connective way within its local context and fosters social responsibility. Among the association’s key projects are Cofestival – an international contemporary dance festival, the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive, the serial problem-based curating platform Choreographic Turn, the production of performances, advocacy projects of the Nomad Dance Academy network, and the educational contemporary dance format CoTeaching.

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Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija
Jakopičeva 13
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
nda@nda.si

Postal address and office location:
Trg Prekomorskih brigad 1
1000 Ljubljana

VAT: 11214929
IBAN: SI 56 340001015894168, Bank Sparkasse

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HISTORY OF THE NDA NETWORK

The regional Nomad Dance Academy network was established in 2005 in Belgrade as a response to the needs of a younger generation of dance artists and producers for connection, greater visibility, and more fluid collaboration. Our intentions were first recognized and supported by Nevenka Koprivšek, who accompanied us in our initial steps. The founders of the network came from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia. A strong impulse for regional cooperation stemmed from our need – after the wars and the politically turbulent period of the 1990s – to find a shared cultural and political denominator and create our own framework for implementing programs. For this reason, solidarity-based, emancipatory, and anti-colonial pedagogical and artistic practices are inscribed in our foundations.

Between 2008 and 2010, we carried out three editions of the intensive mobile dance program NDA Educational Program, intended for Balkan and international students. During the same period, we founded and supported six contemporary dance festivals: Kondenz in Belgrade, Antistatic in Sofia, Locomotion in Skopje, Zvrk in Sarajevo, Platforma in Zagreb, and Cofestival in Ljubljana, three of which remain active today with local curatorial and production autonomy.

We initiated processes of self-education and knowledge production, advocacy efforts, and publishing in the field of contemporary dance. In 2012, we began the process of archiving and historicizing dance in our region and have since become one of the leading organizations in this area. Up until 2025, not a single public institution dedicated to contemporary dance has been established in the entire region; therefore, we decided to strengthen our own competencies and take on the public role of the institutions that did not exist. Thus, over the span of twenty years, the NDA network functioned as a dispersed, polycentric regional center for contemporary dance.

We initiated countless programs and projects of various scales and purposes, some of which are still active today: CoTeaching, the regional residency network NORSE, dance archiving and historicizing, Nomad Summer, advocacy conferences and consultations, Critical Practice MADE IN YU, Imaginary School, theory and publishing, and others.

Our methods of organizing, financing, and decision-making were always horizontal, inclusive, and development-oriented. The network was founded by people, and its members were individuals; administrative, financial, and organizational instruments were always treated as means rather than ends. We were organized into several bodies, such as the Decision Making Body, Coordination Board, Artistic Body, various working groups, and local bodies. We dedicated much attention to maintaining balance between local and regional needs, between artistic content and production capacities, and between centralized coordination and local sovereignty.

Drawing on our experience in network management, and in response to the need for additional funding and visibility, we established four local organizations under the name Nomad Dance Academy – in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Throughout its twenty-year existence, the network has been funded by and has taken part in partnerships such as Jardin d’Europe, Dance On Pass On Dream On, (Non)Aligned Movements, Life Long Burning, DanceMap, Imaginary School, among others.

PEOPLE

DRAGANA ALFIREVIĆ

She was born in 1976 in Belgrade, where she studied art history, and completed her specialized studies as part of the Body Unlimited program at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Novi Sad.

She is the founder of the Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy and a member and producer of NDA Slovenia. Dragana is a co-founder of STANICA in Belgrade and, since 2012, a co-curator and co-producer of CoFestival, an international contemporary dance festival. Dragana has created or co-created more than 25 full-length performances and several short choreographies, and regularly collaborates with theaters as a choreographer. She creates performances, writes, curates festivals, and produces artistic events at the intersection of practice, theory, and activism.

She is interested in new ways of organizing and producing artistic content that stem from actual needs rather than pre-established formats. In her artistic work, Dragana develops her own artistic practices based on research and continuity, as opposed to project-based work.

She received the 2019 Ksenija Hribar Award for her production work.

JASMINA ZALOŽNIK PhD

Jasmina Založnik, dramaturg, theater scholar, reviewer/critic, producer.

She completed her master’s degree in philosophy in the Intercultural Studies—Comparative Study of Ideas and Cultures at the University of Nova Gorica. With the help of a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Elphinstone PhD Scholarship, she completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Visual Culture and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom.

In 2015, she received the Ksenija Hribar Award in the category of criticism/dramaturgy/theory, with the committee highlighting in its statement her dedicated efforts to connect current political and social issues with theatrical practices.

She is an active member of the Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia collective, Cities of Women, and professional associations (Society of Critics and Theater Scholars, Society for Contemporary Dance), and is an engaged writer, dramaturg, curator, moderator, consultant, researcher, and artistic collaborator in both the domestic and international fields.

She publishes articles in domestic and international academic and theoretical journals, such as *Maska*, *Dialogi*, *Amfiteater*, *Reartikulacija*, *Performance Research*, *AM – Journal of Art and Media Studies*, and others. She also writes introductory and analytical texts for catalogs and theater programs. She is an artistic co-creator of CoFestival; in 2019, she completed her role as programme director of the Performa & Platforma festival, and she actively collaborates with the Cona Institute. As a dramaturg, she has collaborated with Ana Romih, Ben Novak, Ajda Tomazin, Sinja Ožbolt, Mojca Kasjak, Ivan Mijačević, and others.

ROK VEVAR

Rok Vevar graduated from the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana.
In the 1990s, he attended the Theater and Puppetry School – Cosmopolitan Art Workshop (GILŠ KODUM) at the former ZKOS. He is a writer on contemporary performing arts, as well as a historian and archivist of contemporary dance. He has published articles and reviews in a number of daily newspapers (Delo, Finance, Večer), in specialized journals (Maska, Frakcija), and in domestic and international occasional publications.

As a dramaturg, he has collaborated with artists in the fields of contemporary dance and theater (Sinja Ožbolt, Jana Menger, Goran Bogdanovski, Andreja Rauch Pozdravnik, Snježana Premuš, Kaja Lorenci, Dejan Srhoj, Oliver Frljić, Ana Vujanović, Saša Asentić). Together with Simona Semenič, he created three original performances: A Handful of Empty Hands (2001), Solo Without a Ticket (2003), and Cartography of Feature-Length Images (2005).

As part of the FIT festival network (Poland, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia) and at international festivals (Bulgaria, Latvia, Croatia), he has taught young critics, dance dramaturgs, and publicists; at the Academy of Dance and AGRFT in Ljubljana, he has taught history, dramaturgy, analysis, contemporary dance theory, and theater criticism. Since 2010, he has been an active member of the Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy and its various artistic, educational, and production programs.

As part of the Nomad Dance Institute project, he initiated the archiving and historicization of choreographic practices in this region, publishing the findings of his historical research in two issues of the journal Maska (Shifts in Contemporary Dance II, The Autonomy of Dance). Since 2010, he has been an active member of the Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy and its various artistic, educational, and production programs. As part of the Nomad Dance Institute project, he initiated the archiving and historicization of choreographic practices in this region, publishing the findings of his historical research in two issues of the journal Maska (Shifts in Contemporary Dance II, The Autonomy of Dance).

In 2012, he established the “Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive” in his apartment and moved it to the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana in April 2018 (he also presented his archive at Harvard University in the United States). He founded the Ukrep dance festival and curated it at the Ljubljana Dance Theater from 2008 to 2010 together with Sinja Ožbolt; since 2012, he has been co-curator of the international contemporary dance festival CoFestival (Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia, Kino Šiška). He published a selection of his reviews and articles in the book Rok za oddajo (2011); in 2018, he edited the book Dan, noč + človek = Ritem: Antologija slovenske sodobnoplesne publicistike 1918–1960, for which he selected the material and wrote the introductory texts. In 2020, his monograph Ksenija, Xenia: Ksenija Hribar’s London Dance Years 1960–1978 was published. For his work, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award in 2019 and the Vladimir Kralj Award in 2020 for achievements in the field of theater criticism and theater studies for the period 2018–2019.

In 2020, he was a co-curator of the exhibitions *Autography, Enigma, Rebellion: The Photography of Božidar Dolenec* and *AWARENESS! RESISTANCE! REACTION! Performance and Politics in the 1990s in the Post-Yugoslav Context* at the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art. During the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/2022, he taught at the Anton Bruckner Private University (Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität) in Linz (Austria), in the Department of Contemporary Dance and Movement Research. He has been a member of several expert committees (Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Municipality of Maribor) and juries (Borštnikovo srečanje, Gibanica). He is self-employed in the field of culture.

NINA BOŽIČ PhD

Nina Božič Yams holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Management and works as an innovation facilitator and researcher in the fields of innovation management and the future of work at RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden).

Since 2010, she has been researching how the knowledge, methods, and practices of contemporary dance art can stimulate creativity, change, and innovation in research on development processes in the public sector and industry. Her doctoral thesis and the resulting book, titled “The Poetry of Everyday Work,” were inspired by both the practice and theory of contemporary dance arts.

She began her career as a management consultant at Deloitte, established the CEED Slovenia entrepreneurship center, and subsequently continued her career and research work in Sweden as an innovation consultant and entrepreneurial researcher in collaboration with the municipalities of Nacka, Eskilstuna, and Västerås, and companies such as ABB, Electrolux, Ericsson, GodEl, and others.

Since 2018, she has been dedicated to exploring the potential of smart technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to enrich the human experience of reality and transform the future of work. She is inspired by speculative design and fiction. Using various artistic media, she helps organizations and companies explore possible futures.

DISKOlektiv

DISKOlektiv artistically explores "what is" and playfulness in roles such as dancer, performer, choreographer, clown, educator, writer, producer, musician, MC (to name just a few); and communicates the results of their research in forms such as performance, practice, dance, game, event, choreography, concert, experiment, installation, lecture, workshop, publication, clown act, video, score (to name just a few). Since 2010, DISKOlektiv members have been playing the Game of Names, in which bodies exchange and borrow each other's names.

http://discollective.upri.se

JANA JEVTOVIĆ

Jana Jevtović is a choreographer, dancer, and performer whose work encompasses performances, dances, texts, and videos, often created through collaborative processes and structures with others. Rather than thematic frameworks, she is primarily interested in the situations and mechanisms that occur in and around the performance event itself.

She works in Europe, the U.S., and Canada, and has collaborated with artists such as Mårten Spångberg (Geo-Trauma Dance; The Nature Redux – The Great Outdoors), Dragana Alfirević (Episode 3: long distance creationship; Episode 93: the next piece), Dana Michel (house of work; the greater the weight), Amanda Piña and Daniel Zimmermann (Endangered Human Movements Vol. 1 – Four remarks on the history of dance), and others.

Her collaboration with Céline Larrère (aka Celina Larrerović), which she initiated in 2011, is based on a body of episodic performances and performative practices titled Chorégraphie, BABY!.

Jana graduated from Concordia University (Montreal) in 2006.

In 2011, she received a DanceWeb scholarship, and since 2014 she has been a member of Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.

DEJAN SRHOJ

Dejan Srhoj is a dancer, choreographer, dance curator, and educator. Through choreographic methods, he explores ways of being together—with other people, objects, and ideas.

He co-founded the regional network Nomad Dance Academy and has dedicated himself to establishing structures that enable nomadic education, festival production, and advocacy.

He understands the position of a dancer as a practice of dance, speech, touch, unknowing, and constant wonder, which he enters anew every day. A dancer is an artist, the author of their own experience, and a medium.

In his pedagogical work, he creates spaces that allow new knowledge to emerge. For over ten years, he has led weekly “Compositions of Differences” training sessions and, in collaboration with Nina Božič, conducts workshops for organizations in Sweden.

He understands choreographic work as a magical process of creating a parallel space and time. In 2026, he choreographed the project Imagine in Novi Sad with Dragana Alfirević. In addition, he continues his long-standing practice of City Mapping, in which he invites audiences in various cities and countries to observe the city as a performance.

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JAN ROZMAN

Jan Rozman (1991) works as a performer, choreographer, dancer, and improviser, based between Ljubljana and Berlin.

In his artistic practice, he explores the expanded concept of physicality, material semiotics, textures, gaps, errors, and chaos, ecology, imagination, (science) fiction, and humor. His work focuses on the exploration and articulation of relevant performative expressions for the post-internet / Anthropocene era.

He attended the Art High School in Ljubljana, in the contemporary dance department, studied choreography at the Amsterdam SNDO (AhK), and completed his master’s degree in the SODA program at the HZT (UdK) in Berlin. In 2016, he also completed his undergraduate studies in physical therapy at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Ljubljana (UL).

He has created several original works (most recently REČI REČI, MEMEMEME, Desna Leva, and Predmetenje) and has received numerous awards for his work.

In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award, presented by the Slovenian Contemporary Dance Association, and was the recipient of a danceWEB scholarship as part of the Impulstanz festival in Vienna. In 2020, he was invited to a residency with the GPS program, run by Movement Research in New York, and that same year, he and his collaborators were also residents at the FELD theater in Berlin.

www.janrozman.link

BENO NOVAK

Beno’s work is a constant exploration of personal experiences, expressed through intense physicality intertwined with sensitivity, fragility, strength, and exhaustion.

Beno graduated from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2016 and was later invited to enhance his knowledge at the Tisch Dance Department (New York University) and The Place Dance Academy (London).

He has danced for many different companies and with numerous renowned artists. In London, he danced for the Gary Clarke Company, Jason Mabana Dance, and the James Wilton Dance Company, and collaborated with choreographers such as Matej Kejžar, Alix Eynaudi, Paul Blackman & Christine Gouzelis, Ricardo Ambrozio, Zsuzsa Rozsavolgyi, Etienne Guilloteau, and others. Many of his works are created in collaboration with other artists, such as the duet “400 Rabbits” with Marina Abib, the solo “Owe” by Junior Mufutau Jussuf, “::Nature::Dialogue::” with Dragana Alfirović, “Body Concert” with Ana Romih, and others.

He is the artistic and executive director of the Summer Intensive Portugal festival and the Kalejdoskop festival in Slovenia. One of his main commitments is sharing/teaching and developing his Zero Space method.

AJDA TOMAZIN

Ajda Tomazin, a choreographer and designer, graduated from the SVŠGL High School of Contemporary Dance in 2005 and received her bachelor’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2011, studying under Tanja Pak, M.A., and Milan Erič, M.A. In 2010, she spent a year studying film and television editing at AGRFT, but the following year she was drawn back to the performing arts and therefore went on to study at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at the University of Giessen in Germany, where she completed her master’s degree in Choreography and Performance under Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst in 2014. During and after her academic studies, she participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions with her works (photography, video, ceramics, and unique design). As a costume and/or set designer, she has collaborated with numerous artists in the performing arts (Maja Delak, Magdalena Reiter, Matevž Dobaj, the M O N S T R A collective, etc.). She is the recipient of the 2019 Ksenja Hribar Award for set design in the field of contemporary dance.

As a choreographer, she worked for several years at Schauspiel Frankfurt and taught dance at KD Qulenium, Studio Dansa, JSKD seminars, Schauspiel Frankfurt, and elsewhere. During her master’s studies, she launched the long-term project Imagination of Expectations, which resulted in a trilogy: the visual installations Net and Work (2012), the dance performance String Theory (2014), and the research-based performance Audition for Producers (2015–…). Since 2014, she has focused her artistic practice on two target groups: dance performances for children and young people (From a Drop to the Ocean, Čigumitvist, Iceberg _ the giant,…) and artistic andragogical processes with representatives of the senior generation, through a series of projects exploring social choreography in the senior generation (Flock of Experienced Birds, Flock of Experienced Flyers,…).

Her specificity lies in the fact that she develops comprehensive concepts for projects that encompass choreography and design (visual design, set design, costumes), thereby creating a unique language and methodology for the creative process. These qualities are reflected in her original productions, the quality of which is increasingly recognized by the broader international professional community. This is confirmed by guest performances and awards. In 2019, the Odprti predali Institute, an institute for contemporary interdisciplinary processes, was established in Kranj.

More about: http://ski.emanat.si/ajda-tomazin/

BOJANA ROBINSON

Bojana Robinson, born in 1982 in Belgrade, is a choreographer, dancer, and performer based in Ljubljana. She works in the fields of dance, performance, and theater, and is interested in collaborations that foster a horizontal exchange of practices and knowledge.

In her original work, she explores staging strategies and uncovers various performative mechanisms for bringing questions from the intimate realm into the public sphere. Her original performance Oh, how very ordinary (co-authored with Katja Legin) was presented at the Mladi levi Festival 2022, the Krušče Festival 2022, the Desire Central Station Festival 2022, and Gibanica 2023. Her original performance Mašina premiered in 2024 at Cankarjev dom and was presented at the Kondenz Festival in Belgrade.

As a dancer, she has performed in works by (among others) Boris Čakširan, Rebecca Murgi, Kaja Lorenci, Vita Osojnik, Boštjan Antončič, Karen Levi, Sebastijan Starič, Joao da Silva, Milan Kuzanek, Sanja Tropp Frühwald … In recent years, she has collaborated with choreographers Snježana Premuš, Andreja Rauch Podrzavnik, and Mateja Bučar. In this work, she explores in various ways how somatic practice manifests itself in the performance field, using the principles of instant composition, structured improvisation, and choreographic sketches as the foundational materials for performances, installations, and with the development of a specific dance language within specific choreographic structures.

As a choreographer and movement consultant, she has collaborated on more than 30 theatrical productions for adults and children at theaters in Serbia and Slovenia, as well as on Vuk Ršumović’s feature film *Ničije dete*. She created a contemporary dance choreography for the Kolo Ensemble in Belgrade. In 2005, she graduated from the Salzburg Academy of Dance (SEAD) and completed the Erasmus program “Dance as integrated in society and humanity” (SEAD and SNDO).

More about: Bojana Robinson | koreografski imenik

GORAN INJAC

Goranj Injac is a performing arts curator, dramaturg, lecturer, and researcher.

He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and essays published in Polish, Serbian, and other international journals on art and theater. As an independent curator, he has collaborated with various international theaters and arts festivals, institutes, and repertory and independent theaters.

He was also one of the curators of EEPAP (East European Performing Arts Platform). Between 2012 and 2014, he curated international projects and the accompanying program for the Narodowy Stary Teatr in Krakow.

CÉLINE LARRÈRE

Céline Larrère / France / voice, sounds, words, movement & ephemeral devices, a performer and cultivator of living-moving objects, dancing noises, decaying texts, ephemeral choreographies, and nonsensical sustainable development improvisations across various media—body, voice, installation, photography, writing, cooking solo or with others.

In recent years, she has performed at various French, Balkan, and other European festivals, traveled to Japan on multiple occasions (in warrior dreams), and collaborated with various artists in the fields of performance, theater, audiovisual art, music, and dance.

Since 2008, she has been a member of Les Moric(h)ettes, since 2011 of Jevtović & Larrerović, and since 2013 of Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.

larrerovic.wordpress.com
averagebastards.wordpress.com
lesmorichettes.blogspot.fr
choregraphiebaby.blogspot.fr
nomadnutschaos.blogspot.fr

NETWORKS

Nomad Dance Academy

NDA

Global Practice Sharing

GPS

Movement Research

Dance On, Pass On, Dream On

Life Long Burning

LLB

Kooperativa

Gibanica

Neodvisni