Yearbook of the Independent Performing Arts Scene in Serbia - TkH

aspect: “Fostering Creativity”, organised by the Station. It was a series ofworkshops, trainings and master classes, resulting in seven performancesfeaturing emerging artists, presented as works in progress in 2007. Threevoted best received an opportunity to be completed in professional conditions.This project contributed to raising the profile of a certain number– admittedly almost negligible (as we still talk small numbers here) – of newauthors. Among the emerging artists (not each of them associated withthis project), I shall mention Ljiljana Tasić, Dragana Bulut, Ana Dubljević,or Marko Milić, who seem to be the most proficient contributors of theirgeneration.As for the second problem, theoretical/critical writing on contemporarydance in Serbia is still scarce – there is not a single theorist or critic, specializedin contemporary dance. The crucial problem is education, as contemporarydance is completely excluded from the academia. Thence, thereis only one (privately published) ballet/modern dance journal Orhestra,few critics like Jelena Kajgo and Milica Zajcev report on dance and balletin Serbia for daily newspapers, and few theorists of performing arts andculture, associated with the TkH platform and journal are concerned withthe contemporary performing arts in general. In economic terms, demandis raised as the scene is growing, but the adequate supply is still not there:education in a new field is time-consuming, and it is still impossible for anylocal critic or theorist to specialize exclusively in contemporary dance andmake a living on fees for a few reviews per year.dancing Social BodiesThis was a general historical and current overview of the contemporarydance scene in Serbia, from my perspective. What I would like to engage innow is a more theoretical and politically charged discussion of the situation.Those are my concluding remarks, as my intention is not to provide a toolkit of answers and ready prescriptions, but rather to open up a critical debate,still absent in Serbia…When I argue that history of the local contemporary dance may as wellstart from the present, I imply not only that contemporary dance is a newphenomenon in Serbia, but also that my writing need not contemplateits historical background since what we have here now is contemporaryWestern dance. At that point I abandoned my case and attempted to clarifywhat had in the past occupied the place of contemporary dance in presentterms.Now I would like to resume the issue. A few years ago Janez Janša (EmilHrvatin) put forward a provocative statement: contemporary dance