IAS Book Launch: Contemporary Dance Festivals in the Former Yugoslav Space

ABOUT THE BOOK
Contemporary Dance Festivals in the Former Yugoslav Space: (in)dependent scenes expands the understanding of conditions defining the creation and circulation of contemporary dance that differ across Europe. It focuses on festival-making connected with the Balkan regional project ‘Nomad Dance Academy’ (NDA), and highlights collective approaches to sustain a theorisation of festivals using the concepts of dissensus and imperceptible politics. Drawing from anthropological methods, three festivals PLESkavica, Slovenia; Kondenz, Serbia and LocoMotion, North Macedonia, are explored through social, political and historical currents affecting curatorial practice. This book closely follows how festival-makers navigate the values of international development that during and after the Yugoslav wars looked to art as part of peacekeeping and nation-building processes. This coincided with increasing discourse and practices of contemporary dance that gained momentum in the 1980s alongside European festivalisation. I show how 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.
The book was published with Routledge in 2023.

ABOUT THE EVENT
In celebration of her book Alexandra Baybutt will hold a conversation with some of its key contributors: Marijana Cvetković, artistic director of Service Station for Contemporary Dance, Belgrade, Serbia; Jasmina Založnik, curator, scholar and co-producer Nomad Dance Slovenia/CoFestival, Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, director of Lokomotiva, Skopje, North Macedonia. Joining in person will be independent curators from the London dance and performance scene including Heidi Rustgaard (H2Dance / Fest En Fest), Giuliana Majo (Trip Space) and Hanna Gillgren (H2Dance). We will use the book as a point of departure for a conversation across about working conditions for dance practices and the functions of festivals, thinking from and across our specific contexts.