Choreographer and dancer Irena Z. Tomažin developed her dance practice in combination with voice, in the physical realm that had not been extensively explored in dance before and has developed, with some rare modern dance references (Valeska Gert), only in recent decades. In dialogue with Gert, this practice got signified with the term choreovocalistics and configured its historical referential field in the Maska issue Voice of Dance (Vevar 2019, 80–84). It is important to emphasize that the struggle for the perception of dance in the material realm of its existence should not only include tangible or haptic matter in connection with physicality but also the sonic and vocal aspects of the dancing body (being sub-sonoric or choreovocal). The choreovocalist oeuvre of Irena Z. Tomažin from the early 2000s developed through various artistic strategies: from defamiliarizing the body with the use of voice in her early works, including Caprice (Kaprica, 2005) or Caprice (Re)lapse ((S)pozaba kaprice, 2006), to playing with the feminine aspect of ethnic songs as in The Taste of Silence Always Resonates (Okus tišine vedno odmeva, 2012), up to making dance compositions from different vocal, physical, and material sources, as in Pattern of a Spilled Voice, Traces of Caramel Footprints (Vzorec razlitega glasu, odtis karamelnih stopinj, 2023) and collaborating with another choreovocalist, Jule Flierl, in U.F.O.: Hommage to Katalin Ladik (U.F.O.: Poklon Katalini Ladik, 2021). One of the important aspects of her work is the ability to perceive the body and the movement in its synesthetic qualities: the body with its accompanying inherent sound. The other is the existential and political aspect of having a voice and the fact that voice destabilizes the perception of subjectivities, once it appears in its acousmatic material mode.
From Nika Arhar, Jasmina Založnik (ed.), Bodies of Dance, Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After (Belgrade, 2024)
