Gibanica 2025: Dance Criticism Workshop

Bojana Cvejić, born in Belgrade and based in Brussels since 2001, is a dramaturge and writer whose research spans performance theory, critical theory, philosophy, and dance studies. She is the author of the monograph Choreographing Problems: Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Maska, 2021 Slovene translation) and the co-author and co-editor of ten books, among them A Choreographer’s Score (with A.T. De Keersmaeker); Parallel Slalom: A Lexicon in Non-Aligned Poetics (co-edited with Goran Sergej Pristaš); Public Sphere by Performance and Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy (2022; co-written with Ana Vujanović). She has published extensively in various journals and magazines and edited volumes of essays and books on art in English, French, Dutch, Slovene, and other languages. Cvejić is a Professor of Dance Theory at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and a visiting professor at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University. She has been affiliated with P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) since 2002, where she teaches performance & dance theory and oversees the theory program. Since 1996, Bojana has made, performed, or collaborated on numerous works in the field of European music theatre, dance, and theatre as a co-director, dramaturge, and performer. She has co-authored several videos and video installations exploring dance and choreography, such as …in a non-wimpy way… (with Steve Paxton, 2013), Yvonne Rainer’s WAR (2013), and Spatial Confessions (for Tate Modern, 2014). Bojana has been part of several collective platforms (Performing Arts Forum, Saint-Erme since 2005; TkH/Walking Theory 2001–17) dedicated to critical and experimental self-organised practice and production that inform her research in social choreography, transindividuality, and antifascist solidarity.

Pia Brezavšček is the editor-in-chief of Maska, a bilingual journal of contemporary performing arts, based in Ljubljana. She works as a cultural worker in several roles – editor, publicist, critic, theatrologist, and dramaturge. She is a philosopher, an art historian, and a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. She is the co-founder of the website www.neodvisni.art, which focuses on critical reflection of the local independent performing arts scene, and served as its editor from 2019 to 2022. From 2017 to 2020, she was the president of the Society for Contemporary Dance of Slovenia. She taught the course “Dance, Politics, Sociology” at the Dance Academy at the Alma Mater Europaea. She has also published numerous articles on her other fields of interest, feminism and contemporary philosophies of the body. She has worked as a dramaturge in projects by Bara Kolenc, Magdalena Reiter, and Snježana Premuš, and regularly collaborates with Saška Rakef. She was awarded the Ksenija Hribar Award for Dance Criticism (2013) and the Nika Bohinc Award for Best Theoretical Essay (2024).

Rok Vevar is a theatre scholar, curator, archivist, historian of contemporary dance, and founder of the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive (2012, NDA Slovenia, MG+MSUM), which he also presented at Harvard University, USA. Co-curator of CoFestival, an international contemporary dance festival, member of the Balkan dance network Nomad Dance Academy. As the editor, he selected the material and wrote the accompanying texts for the anthology Day, Night + Man = Rhythm: An Anthology of Slovenian Contemporary Dance Journalism 1918–1960, published in 2018. In 2020, he published a monograph Ksenija, Xenia: The London Dance Years of Ksenija Hribar 1960–1978. In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award and in 2020 the Vladimir Kralj Award for Achievements in Theatre Criticism and Theatre Studies for the years 2018–2019. In 2020, he co-curated the exhibitions Autography, Enigma, Rebellion: The Photography of Božidar Dolenc and KNOWLEDGE! RESIST! REACTION! Performance and Politics in the 1990s in the Post-Yugoslavian Context at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova; in 2024, he co-curated Dance, Resistance, (Non)Action – Aspects of Dance as a Cultural, Political and Artistic Work in the Period of Yugoslavia and After (NDA, MSU Zagreb). He is the co-author of the NADA digital database: the (Non)Aligned Dance Archive. During the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/2022 he taught at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz (Austria) at the Department of Contemporary Dance and Movement Research. He has served on several expert commissions (Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Maribor) and juries (Maribor Theatre Festival, Gibanica) and is self-employed in the field of culture.

The Maska Journal was first published in 1920 and is considered the oldest performing arts magazine in Europe. In 1993, the newly founded Maska Institute took over the publication of the journal and eventually expanded its activities to publishing, performing arts, education (Seminar of Contemporary Performing Arts) and criticism (Neodvisni – portal for contemporary performing arts and artistic production). One of the institute’s fundamental missions is the interdisciplinary production of knowledge across disparate artistic, theoretical, publishing, and educational practices.

The Contemporary Dance Association of Slovenia was established in 1994 as a guild of professionals in the field of dance. Its main activities are advocacy, popularisation, promotion and presentation of Slovene contemporary dance. It is the producer of the Biennial of Contemporary Dance Arts in Slovenia, partner of the Moving Balkans Platform, and awards the Ksenija Hribar Awards.