»Recent Serbian dance history is a dizzying choreography, a sort that would be impossible to imagine. The desire to show dance has put its women protagonists at the core of dance and theatre performances, on the screens of iconic popular music videos and, at a politicised moment in history, in front of quandaries of conscience. Just one step might separate dance from war. - The Desire to Make a Solid History Will End Up in Failure is a performance that Igor Koruga and his collaborators have created in the framework of the regional efforts of the Nomad Dance Academy network to become more familiar with our (contemporary) dance histories and to get to know and better understand the artistic and cultural milieus in which we operate. Igor Koruga is not only a choreographer, dancer and performer, he studied anthropology before venturing into the field of contemporary dance. This is strongly evident in his methodological imagination, thoughtfulness, precision and consistency, which is welcome not only in processes of historicization, but also in the transfer of experimental historiography to other media, such as theatre. The Desire to Make a Solid History is a choreography that uses documentation and testimonies of Serbian (contemporary) dance history to create an illustrative, informative, entertaining and at times startling insight into a highly diversified corpus of dance interests, aesthetics, rhetorical sites of dance, spaces and media in recent Serbian history in the framework of the former Yugoslav federation and later state formations en route to the Republic of Serbia. The stories of the protagonists of the show are permeated by an irresistible desire to participate in all kinds of artistic, commercial, academic and educational projects in which it has been possible to dance since the 1960s, when they entered dance schools as schoolchildren. Their experiences range from folklore groups and modern dance schools to workshops by legendary foreign pedagogues who came to Belgrade as part of dance and theatre festivals. They formed groups, collectives and ensembles, appeared in iconic Serbian music videos and legendary theatre performances. They travelled across Europe and to other continents. In the territory of the former federation, they were probably the only ones in contemporary dance contexts to be confronted with the question of whether their performances were a public good or a collaboration with the politically corrupt authorities of the Milošević regime. The Desire to Make a Solid History is a whirlwind of time that makes the spectator’s head spin.«
CoFestival 2023
