Besides project-based work or educational programmes, contemporary dance has been an incredible agent of communal forms and micro-societies that emerged out of the common work in dance. Throughout history, these kinds of communities had manifested in a variety of forms and emergencies, but their spontaneity makes their mappings very hard to evidence. Some of its forms are connected with body training, project and praxis developments, while others have only a function of gathering—of meeting through dance. The development of dance improvisation practices has catalysed a number of initiations. From this aspect it is necessary to mention an ongoing improvisation format that connects jazz and contemporary musicians with dancers, Neforma (Non-Form), which is a series of performative improvisations organized by composer and musician Tomaž Grom and producer and curator Špela Trošt in the frame of Sploh Institute. From its initial edition in 2010, Neforma, which had its 109th edition in August 2024, has hosted an overwhelming number of domestic and international artists and managed to build a community of very loyal spectators. Returning to the past, one of the most important generators of the Slovenian dance community were Dance Theatre Ljubljana’s morning classes (1984–2008), which exchanged international and domestic dance pedagogues and mixed professionals with those on the way to becoming ones. As (almost) everyone from the sector, including the emerging dancers, took part in the morning classes, they represented the dance scene’s fundamental social cohesion. Its abolishment was a consequence of a fall in attendance, together with the absence of rehearsal directors to maintain the quality of the classes, as they had in the past, marking a paradigmatic change in the Slovene dance community which became stratified. From the side of the professional dance community, the research-based and developmental formats of gatherings have been another generator of the professional dance community in Slovenia. The choreographer and dancer Nina Meško brought the practice of the lab and experimental work from her visits to New York in the 1990s and early 2000s. In collaboration with Dance Theatre Ljubljana, she initiated the Dance Lab, which would host the artists at the venue and organize their semi-finished work presentations. A more recent example could be found in temporary collectives of dancers. One such example is the No!training Lab that was initiated by Katja Legin in Ljubljana (2013). After receiving sufficient funding, instead of spending it on her own work, she decided to invite a group of dancers and performers to work together in the studio and research ‘variations on slowness.’ The result of these continuous gatherings was a series of performances with the same title. However, not only dance practice forms a community around itself. Similar examples can also be found in discursive formats. One of the important gathering places in that regard was Maska’s Seminar of Contemporary Performing Arts (2006–) with its programmes that would seasonally host international guests and domestic lecturers. Already the few selected examples mentioned could serve as evidence that such initiatives have been an important endeavour in the development of the public sphere in contemporary dance.
From Nika Arhar, Jasmina Založnik (ed.), Bodies of Dance, Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After (Belgrade, 2024)
