CoFestival, an international contemporary dance festival, is organized by Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia, Kino Šiška and with the support of the festival’s regular partners.
The program of CoFestival, the international festival of contemporary dance, focuses on two curatorial themes in 2023.
The first features a selection of artists who recently created excellent, fresh, contemporary, but at the same time very diverse choreographic works within the cultural contexts of the former Yugoslavia and Austria (Viktorija Ilioska, Marko Mižimakov, NDA Croatia, Dejan Srhoj, Tatiana Kocmur, Hungry Sharks). Their works focus on the constructions of the potential body and the arrangement of the historical dance corps, architectural brutalism, the distribution of choreography among various contemporary media, and the social and intergenre serial composition of choreography and dance. It should be emphasized that our selection is only a fragment of what is emerging as an extremely intriguing, new and artistically fruitful contemporary dance phenomenon in the area of the former Yugoslavia and Austria.
The second curatorial set focuses on the (open) boundary between dance or kinetic action and its perception, which the CoFestival curatorial team understands as a material condition of human empathy, on which our future ultimately depends. We understand the open borders of bodies, geopolitical areas and various materialities – human and ecosystem – as a political condition of modern coexistence. “Goosebumps” is a label for a synesthetic or kinesthetic experience in which sensory or linguistic information is transformed into a direct material, bodily effect. The phrase is interesting because it uses an example for human, bodily experiences that goes beyond the anthropomorphic: to nature or the animal world. It is the border as a place of open perception; fluidity without technical barriers. Our modern necessity. With their subtle montages of bodily or material content and the contact between what can be done with them to open the pores of our viewers’ skins for bodily thinking, the performances by Christos Papadopoulos, Thiago Granato and Sylvain Huc, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou and Isabelle Schad regulate the conditions of our sensory and mental alertness with scientific precision through their artistic works. It is a flickering of matter in which nothing is certain, as bodies are formed by their time of development.
At CoFestival 2023, the conference program will also focus on aspects of dance archiving and historiography, and we will present some of the latest contemporary dance publications.
Festival tickets and daily tickets on sale!
PROGRAMME
Thursday, 23 November
Kino Šiška, upper foyer at 7:30 p.m.
Urška Boljkovac: Reflection of the Body
(on display until 30 November)
Free entry!
Kino Šiška, Katedrala at 8:00 p.m.
Christos Papadopoulos: Larsen C (2021)
Dance performance – festival opening
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Friday, 24 November 2023
Old Power Station, union hall from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. (daily until 26 November)
Thiago Granato: Through Performative and Choreographic Practices (2023)
Workshop / Participation fee: 100 EUR
Dance Theatre Ljubljana, Prijateljeva 2, at 8:00 p.m.
Ioanna Paraskevopoulou: MOS (2022)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Saturday, 25 November 2023
Kino Šiška, Katedrala at 7:00 p.m.
Hungry Sharks: Béton Brut (2022)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Kino Šiška, Komuna at 8:30 p.m.
Dejan Srhoj: An Evening of Dance Solos (2022)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Sunday, 26 November 2023
Kino Šiška, upper foyer at 5:30 p.m.
Launch of the new thematic issue of Maska performing arts journal on somatic practices (2023)
Free entry!
Kino Šiška, Komuna at 7:00 p.m.
Tatiana Kocmur: The Following Body (2022)
Performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Kino Šiška, Komuna at 8:00 p.m.
Publication presentation Systering, Critical Practice (Made in Yugoslavia) #4
Free entry!
Monday, 27 November 2023
Cukrarna lobby at 7:00 p.m.
Thiago Granato: Trança (2016)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Kino Šiška, Katedrala at 8:30 p.m.
Igor Koruga: The Desire to Make a Solid History Will End Up in Failure (2023)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova from 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m.
Dance Histories in Practice: Selected Aspects of Archiving and Historicization of Dance, seminar
Free entry!
Cirkulacija, Ajdovščina Underpass 2 at 8:00 p.m.
NDA Croatia: The Emerging Performance (2022)
Dance performance
Free entry!
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
City Museum lobby at 7:00 p.m.
Marko Gutić Mižimakov: Your Sweat Leaves a Strangely Metallic Taste in the Air, Young Hunter (2022)
Dance performance
Free entry!
Kino Šiška, Katedrala at 8:30 p.m.
Thiago Granato and Sylvain Huc: The Lost Pieces (2023)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Thursday, 30 November 2023
Kino Šiška, upper foyer from 12:00 until 2:00 p.m.
Dance photography workshop with photographer Urška Boljkovac for high school students
Free entry!
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, Šentjakobsko Stage at 7:00 p.m.
Isabelle Schad: Solo For Claudia and Josephine / Bodies of Light (2022)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Kino Šiška, Katedrala at 9:00 p.m.
Viktorija Ilioska: I Need a New Body (2022)
Dance performance
TICKETS: 8/10 EUR
Organisation: Kino Šiška and NDA Slovenija. In cooperation with PTL, En-Knap, MGML and Cirkulacija 2.
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana and the European projects Life Long Burning and DANCE ON PASS ON DREAM ON and The (Non)Aligned Movement.
