Archiving Dance and Choreography through Post-Socialist Resistance in Eastern Europe
This research project was conducted as an archival and studio-based research focused on historical exchanges between Yugoslav modern dance and German modern dance lineages, examining how embodied memory, dance pedagogy, and political structures inform choreographic production. The research aimed to understand how both aesthetic and ideological influences circulate across European dance histories and how these legacies become embedded in contemporary movement practices. In its first phase, the research took place in Berlin in October 2025 through artistic residency at TanzFabrik Berlin organization and within archives of Akademie der Kunste (Performing arts sector) and International theatre Institute at Kunstlerquartier Bethanien in Berlin.
During the residency focus was on researching the intersection of dance, memory, and resistance, with particular attention to Eastern European dance histories and post-socialist cultural transitions. Special attention is given to tracing the possible interconnected artistic influences between socio-political contexts of Weimar Republic Berlin (1919-1933) and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) during the interwar period, as well as possible postwar influences between Berlin and cultural capitals of socialist Yugoslavia (1945-1992) like Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb. These historical intersections reveal how modern dance became conduit for addressing socio-political upheavals, fostering experimental forms, and challenging dominant ideologies. The research also emphasizes archiving as a critical perspective, exploring how ephemeral art forms like modern and contemporary dance and choreography are documented, preserved, and reinterpreted within cultural and historical contexts.
This aims to emphasise Yugoslav modern dance as historically positioned between socialist cultural infrastructures and transnational modernist influence, and revealing how modern dance artists in both Germany and Yugoslavia continuously repositioned their artistic practices in response to changing political and ideological regimes—from monarchy to fascism, from communism to socialism, and from national to transnational cultural spheres. Taken together, these histories show that Yugoslav modern dance emerged not as an isolated form but within a field of ideological tension between bourgeois/concert modernism and revolutionary/partisan dance, a polarisation characteristic of the global choreographic landscape of the 1930s–1940s. This comparative perspective provided a critical analytical framework for understanding how ideology, national culture, gendered labor, and artistic production intersected in the formation of Yugoslav modern dance, and it became a central conceptual and embodied tool during the studio research phase. These intersections also highlight how modern dance functioned as a means of addressing socio-political transformations, generating experimental forms and challenging dominant cultural narratives. The research further emphasised archiving as an active, interpretive practice, examining how ephemeral choreographic knowledge is documented, preserved, and recontextualized within shifting historical conditions.
During the studio residency at Tanzfabrik Berlin, archival analysis were translated into embodied research, developing movement structures that work through the tensions between archival gaps, embodied memory, and historiographic interpretation. This process resulted in a methodological framework that approaches choreography simultaneously as historiographic inquiry and embodied knowledge production. As part of this framework, I developed a lecture-based performance format in which the audience is invited to participate in the processes of situating, contextualising, and historicising modern and contemporary dance within broader international sociopolitical conditions. The format positions spectators not only as observers but as co-analysts, engaging them in tracing how dance practices circulate, adapt, and shift across ideological and cultural contexts. I have begun sharing this methodology publicly, including within the international exchange program “You Are Not Alone” organized by the Imaginative Choreographic Centre (ICC) in Sofia (November 2025), where it was tested and discussed in a collaborative research environment. This phase contributed to the development of new choreographic strategies and strengthened sustained exchange between Berlin’s contemporary dance context and independent dance communities in Belgrade and the wider Balkan region.
Project "Archiving Dance and Choreography through Post-Socialist Resistance in Eastern Europe"is supported by UNESCO, through the “Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans” (CC4WBs) project, funded by the European Union. The project is focused on fostering dialogue in the Western Balkans by enhancing the cultural and creative sectors for increased socio-economic impact.
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