Yearbook of the Independent Performing Arts Scene in Serbia - TkH

art, body art and happenings of the 1960s and ‘70s. In those cases, we cannotrefer to dance in its actual sense, as it was rather dance piercing throughother art forms and practices. 3 However, we should seriously rethink thestatus of the artist’s body (especially the female artist’s) in the works of,say, Marina Abramović (Belgrade) and Katalin Ladik (Novi Sad), profoundlyignored by dance theory and criticism of the time. Several decades later,their conceptual influences are clearly visible in the contemporary dance,and more conspicuous than any coming from the ballet, or amateur, folk, orpopular dance (exclusively perceived as dance at the time). Their main contributionis conceiving the body along two lines: as artistic material or tool(i.e. body as object or medium of art) and, more importantly, as body of anartist – artistic body (i.e. body as subject of art).Later on we encounter the core of the contemporary dance scene underthe auspices of the postmodern theatre of the late 1970s and ‘80s– admittedly, more advanced in Slovenia and Croatia than in Serbia andMontenegro. In this framework, we should mention the theatre directorsNada Kokotović (also choreographer), Ljubiša Ristić, Haris Pašović, andchoreographer/dancer Sonja Vukićević. Vukićević’s ‘modern dance’ advocatedliberation of the ballet body through a less-codified bodily movement,exploring extensive theatre references through narrative and stage design.Her work was greatly influenced by Carolyn Carlson’s dance poetics andPina Bausch’s Tanztheater, frequently drawing from painting, literature, andfilm (e.g. Rainer Werner Fassbinder).Sonja Vukićević also features as a symptomatic figure for the local paradigmshift from the collectivism common to socialist countries (as was theSFRY), to individualism pursued by the capitalist ones (as were the newstates, successors to SFRY). In fact, she starred in the last Youth Day Rally,performed in 1987. And, instead of the ordinary slet, what we had that yearwas a modern dance performance (based on fragments of Damir ZlatarFray’s Bolero), featuring Vukićević as a solo dancer (although) accompaniedby 9.000 youths. 4 For the first time one could see an individual, clearlysingled out of the anonymous mass of dancing bodies, prophesying the collapseof the “all together now!” slet ideology, both in syntactic and symbolicterms.3 The phrase was adopted from a statement by East Dance Academy; seeGoran Sergej Pristaš, Emil Hrvatin, Bojana Kunst, “East Dance Academy”, Maska,No 103/104, Ljubljana, 2007.4 At the time she was highly acclaimed both as prima ballerina of the NationalTheatre in Belgrade and a modern dancer.