In the field of contemporary dance, a dramaturgical collaborator is still an exception rather than the rule and their role is related to tasks that have nothing to do with dramaturgy. Public discourse is permeated by the question of a dramaturge’s role and the concept of the dramaturgical. The elusiveness of the definition of a dramaturge’s function becomes even greater with the emergence of multimedia projects whose characteristics are constant changeability, and often also the production of material through improvisation, interpersonal relations and contributions of individual artists to the process itself. The dramaturge’s role as well as the dramaturgical function is thus directly related to particular cases and therefore even more elusive.
The words of Heidi Gilpin from 1993 stilly apply today. Speaking about a dramaturge’s work, she says it depends on “how well I know the person, what I know about their work, what they want from an intermediary is really important”.
Due to the elusiveness or changeability and fluidity of a dramaturge’s role, this role is scary, on the one hand, and attractive, on the other, but above all it is a field of constant exploration and discovery.
Wishing to move from theoretical and conceptual work to practice, we prepared a workshop that will focus on and proceed from those components that are crucial for the work of dance dramaturges; it will foreground practical work with the artist and a joint development of a product based on cooperation, the exchange of ideas and thoughts, constant exploration of the dramaturge’s role as a mediator and translator.
About the mentors:
Jasna Žmak
Photo: Personal Archives
graduated in Dramaturgy. She works as a dramaturge and set designer. She often collaborates with Borut Šeparović, Oliver Frljić and Matija Ferlin. She is a member of the editorial board of the Frakcija performing arts journal and the drame.hr Croatian playwriting web portal. She is the art editor of the Film Mutations festival and editor of the palunko.org scriptwriting portal. She received the Routledge award for best student presentation at the 15th Performance Studies International Conference. She writes short stories and critical texts.
Ivana Ivković
Photo: Tomislav Medak
(1975) studies at the Department of Dramaturgy at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb. She is the editor-in-chief of Frakcija performing arts journal and collaborates with several other publications, the Center for Drama Art and has worked as the general coordinator of Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000, a project jointly organized by Zagreb’s eight independent cultural organizations from the fields of performing arts, new media, visual arts, architecture and theory. She has collaborated in the past with Zagreb based independent theater company oour (dance productions: orangecut [2004], To be Confirmed [2005]) and is a member of collaborative artistic company BADco. (Deleted Messages, Fleshdance (2004), research project (2005), memories are made of this…, Protest and Negotiation (2006), 1 poor and one 0 (2008), The League of Time (2009)). She is the co-editor of the textual and pictorial reader DemoKino – Virtual Biopolitical Agora with Davide Grassi (Aksioma and Maska, 2006).
Rok Vevar
Photo: Petra Veber
graduated in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He also studied Theatre Directing at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (1998 – 2000) and attended GILŠ Kodum in Ljubljana (1993-1996). His texts have been published in a series of Slovenian daily newspapers and in certain Slovenian and international professional journals in the field of performing arts and literature. He co-directed three performances with Simona Semenič: A Fistful of Empty Hands, 2001, Solo no Peek, 2003, and A Cartography of the Feature-Length Slide Show, 2005. As a dramaturge, he cooperated in several dance performances and, as a mentor-dramaturge, also with students of the Nomad Dance Academy programme. He is the initiator and curator of the Taking Measures dance festival (2008, 2010) and the School of Creative Critique (Glej 2008 – 2010). He also cooperated in the Pre-Glej projects. As a mentor-critic, he lectured and led workshops in the framework of the FIT Lab educational programme and at other festivals. He has written afterwords to novels and plays. He is the editor of the “Digital Collection of Contemporary Dance Material” at Španski borci.