PROJECTS

ARCHIVING

The Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy has been busy with archiving and historicizing contemporary dance in the region for almost a decade. In the frame of the EU project (Non)Aligned Movements, the partners established a digital database of documents connected with practices of contemporary dance, as well as the different cultures of dance that usually surround it. Thus, dance scholars, researchers and journalists are going to get access to the source documents that are many times lacking in the processes of dance historicizations, furthermore the region that is usually considered as being detached from the important European centers of dance production is going to get an opportunity to be reconsidered as an area of crucial cultural, artistic and political antagonisms in the field of (contemporary) dance. By the end of 2024 the database is going to be open for the public and followed by an exhibition that is going to present some important aspects of dance as practice and means of resistance in the Balkans.

CO-TEACHING

Co-Teaching is an educational format in which two, three, or more pedagogues co-teach the same dance training or workshop. The format is developed by the members of the NDA network and other invited guests.
CoTeaching opens the educational process by creating a safe teaching/learning environment where the transfer of knowledge as well as dance and theoretical practice are conducted in a welcoming manner.
The rules of CoTeaching are determined by a choreographic score which is adaptable to the particular situation, group of students and the task we have set ourselves. The score may include the goal of the training, time, the number of teachers, as well as other information which would facilitate a clear and at the same time playful situation.

More at NDA.si →

CRITICAL PRACTICE (made in YU)

The Critical Practice programme is oriented towards empowering discursive reflections on contemporary performing arts while enabling their breakthrough into the larger public.

More at CPMIYU →

ADVOCACY

Nomad Dance Advocates is an initiative of the Nomad Dance Academy platform, initiated in 2012 as a permanent program for advocating for a more stable position and work conditions in the field of contemporary dance within the Balkan region.
Advocacy events take place in various cities throughout the region and gather artists and policy-makers with the intent to enable them to meet directly, communicate, and exchange experiences around the field of contemporary dance and the politics which concern it. With the help of performative and less formalized communication and discussions, games and art works, representatives of ministries of culture, city administrations as well as other decision-making and funding bodies encounter artists, discover the world behind the stage and gain a better insight into the potential of contemporary dance in today’s cultural landscape.

More at NDA.si →

PUBLICATIONS

Please find the NDA publications below.

By making the publication on the first five years of work of the Nomad Dance Academy regional network (2005-2010) we indented to recount what had all been undertaken by the twenty-one founding members and the six founding partner organizations, on various levels of dance and choreographic work: education, curation, theory and critical writing, international production and involvement in European projects and networks. We have always nourished a holistic view of artistic work, never categorizing and separating education from creation and writing from practice. This perspective gave us a lot of freedom from which the idea that “all is education” was born. It was this idea that has been underlying in our projects afterwards such as Nomad Dance Institute, CoTeaching, The Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive and others.

Throughout the publication, we tried to mention and list all activities, people involved, to evaluate our own work and be critical towards our environment and ourselves. This summary helped us create the “we” on which our work is still based, fifteen years later.

As published on NDA.si →

Download the book HERE ↓

Through this book we bring forward ideas, findings, dilemmas, thoughts about the past and future that artists, organizers, writers, programmers and audiences of the Nomad Dance Academy regional network and invited friends engaged in during 2011 and 2012. Every piece of work of NDA in these two years operated from the urgency of the questions posed underneath. We used the artistic framework as an excuse to deal with much more urgent questions.

Editorial by Dragana Alfirević & Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski

It is not easy to write the editorial for the book at the dawn of the end of the world as we know it, or maybe in the evening before the beginning of the world as we want it?

The world is not only going to die: it even never looked smaller. In terms of finances and resources available, in terms of shrinking of the public space, in terms of how hope, faith and trust are distributed, in terms of how we as civilisation arrange and organize ourselves and how we appreciate what we have. But it also seems much bigger than ever, in terms of challenge, confrontations and changes that have to be made. By us.

Ok, we are flexible, but how much more can we stretch to prevent the ruins of a utopia falling on our heads? In which constellation will we wake up after the collapse?

We have been constantly re-inventing our working processes, and ourselves, searching for the best models and ideas of possible communication, decision-making and human organization. It helped us to make this world a better place, but the feeling of hopelessness is still there.

It’s the end of the past as we know it, or is this the end of the future? Which future? The future of the communisms, the future of the leftists? Of the independent art scenes? Of project-oriented ways of working? The future of this feeling of inevitability and irreversibility? The future of Nomad Dance Academy? The future of love?

How do we go on then? Do we engage even more in low paid small-scale works, do we dive even more to our own practices, keeping it even more hermetic and inaccessible to others? Do we need to prioritize profit over social effects? Do we need to put red carpets in our festivals and pretend all is fine? Do we go with the flow and never ask ourselves – when does art become a commodity in the hands of capitalism? Do we still call ourselves artists? Do we pretend that nothing is happening? Do we get drunk until we forget it all?

What is to be done?

We answer it by doing it, and we believe this makes a change, this makes a difference that we all need and brings art to the place of exploration. Art is something that can bring us beyond expectations, make us see the world as a place where we can celebrate the change rather than a place where we celebrate the profit we gain through the artistic work. We are much more than agents of commodification of our work, and that is why we are the future.

As published on NDA.si →

Download the book HERE ↓