Contemporary dance festivals in the former Yugoslav space, 2007-2017: the imperceptible politics of curatorial praxis
type: CreativeWork
description: Analysis of three festival examples, Kondenz, Belgrade Serbia; PLESkavica, Ljubljana, Slovenia; and LocoMotion, Skopje, North Macedonia, makes a contribution to scholarship on the former Yugoslavia. This research contributes to literature on festival studies, curatorial practices and contemporary dance. The concept of imperceptible politics proposed by sociologists Dimitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson and Vassilis Tsianos (2008: 71-82), characterised by forms of escape and subversion, is used to analyse the selected festivals, and the effects of the organisational principles underpinning their curation. Curation produces ethical and democratic dilemmas which leads to the conclusion that festival-making is a political practice through the creation of dissensus, following philosopher Jacques Rancière (1991: 71). Emancipatory qualities of festival-making are analysed as the curators repurpose the terms of international development and escape hierarchies in the field of dance to develop conditions for contemporary dance as an expanded practice and sustain professional working lives. Contemporary dance acts as an agent for transformation, but also a carrier of older forms of social organisation, reflecting methods and values of Yugoslav Worker Self-management that are deployed by the groups creating the festivals. Arts festival-making through self- organisation and processes of discovery mitigates the effects of hierarchies in contemporary dance, as well as the ways its support structures pre-curate choices. This gives rise to a new typology, the heuristic artist-led festival. This research builds upon observations made by dance theorist Bojana Kunst about the differences in contemporary dance between east and west Europe (2013[2004]) that by 2007 are characterised less by aesthetics and more by differences and limitations of available infrastructure and policies in the former Yugoslav space, as well as organisational principles deployed by festival-makers. Mixed-meth…
abstract: Analysis of three festival examples, Kondenz, Belgrade Serbia; PLESkavica, Ljubljana, Slovenia; and LocoMotion, Skopje, North Macedonia, makes a contribution to scholarship on the former Yugoslavia. This research contributes to literature on festival studies, curatorial practices and contemporary dance. The concept of imperceptible politics proposed by sociologists Dimitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson and Vassilis Tsianos (2008: 71-82), characterised by forms of escape and subversion, is used to analyse the selected festivals, and the effects of the organisational principles underpinning their curation. Curation produces ethical and democratic dilemmas which leads to the conclusion that festival-making is a political practice through the creation of dissensus, following philosopher Jacques Rancière (1991: 71). Emancipatory qualities of festival-making are analysed as the curators repurpose the terms of international development and escape hierarchies in the field of dance to develop conditions for contemporary dance as an expanded practice and sustain professional working lives. Contemporary dance acts as an agent for transformation, but also a carrier of older forms of social organisation, reflecting methods and values of Yugoslav Worker Self-management that are deployed by the groups creating the festivals. Arts festival-making through self- organisation and processes of discovery mitigates the effects of hierarchies in contemporary dance, as well as the ways its support structures pre-curate choices. This gives rise to a new typology, the heuristic artist-led festival. This research builds upon observations made by dance theorist Bojana Kunst about the differences in contemporary dance between east and west Europe (2013[2004]) that by 2007 are characterised less by aesthetics and more by differences and limitations of available infrastructure and policies in the former Yugoslav space, as well as organisational principles deployed by festival-makers. Mixed-meth…
author: Baybutt, A.
date published: 2019
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:04:13Z
provider: Middlesex University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Middlesex University