JBTZ Affair and Dance Theatre Ljubljana (1988, Slovenia)
»After 1985, when the federal political climate in the socialist Yugoslavia became overheated, the dancers and choreographers of Dance Theatre Ljubljana performed at a series of different events organized by the developing civil society in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. One of them was a congregation on the 31st of May 1988, which was one of the first massive political gatherings in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia at the end of the Yugoslav Federation. On this day, Mladina’s journalists Janez Janša and David Tasić, and a Slovene sergeant in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), Ivan Borštner, were arrested in Ljubljana. The arrest of Franci Zavrl, from Mladina’s editorial board, followed in the next few days. After being involved in writing and publishing articles critical of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), they were charged with betraying military secrets. The JBTZ trial (or the JBTZ affair, originally afera JBTZ), also known as the Ljubljana trial (ljubljanski proces) or the Trial against the Four (proces proti četverici), was a political trial held in a military court, thus the government of Slovenia was not involved in the proceedings. The defendants were sentenced to between six months and four years of jail time. The trial sparked great uproar in Slovenia and was an important event for the organization and development of the liberal democratic opposition in the republic. The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights was founded on the same day of the arrest, which is generally considered as the beginning of the so called Slovenian Spring. On the 21st of June 1988, a congregation was organized for the support of the foursome on trial in the Congress Square in Ljubljana. Around 25,000 people appeared to show their support and different organizations linked to the developing civil society in Slovenia participated with their speeches or cultural programmes. Two dancers, from Dance Theatre Ljubljana, Sabina Potočki and Brane Potočan, performed with a short choreography, dressed in the costumes of Brane Završan’s choreography Panoptikum. The performance is one example of the close connection of the non-institutional performing arts and dance scene in the happenings that would bring the independence of the Republic of Slovenia or, more precisely, oppose the rise of nationalisms in the SFRY.«
From Nika Arhar, Jasmina Založnik (ed.), Bodies ofm Dance, Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After (Belgrade, 2024)
