With the lecture "Blurred background: Black performance as political ontology" by Thomas DeFrantz, a choreographer and theoretician from New York, this year's 15th Kondenz - Festival of Contemporary Dance and Performance, organized by the Contemporary Dance Service Station, opened on October 23rd in Magacin.
Thomas DeFrantz's lecture on Black Performance points to the importance of artistic action that considers political along with issues of aesthetic value, skill, practice and expertise, as well as the issue of creating commons in performance, resulting from the radical erasure of black (and other ) people from accepted forms of "human" that allow many to gather in places of common and close vulnerability. Thomas DeFrantz is in Belgrade thanks to the long-term commitment of Stanica and the Trust for Mutual Understanding foundation to support the exchange of dance scenes between Serbia and the USA.
"I am very glad to open the festival with a lecture on black aesthetics and the political ontology of performance. This is part of a new research project of my laboratory, which we started this year and will develop it in the next three years", said Thomas DeFrantz. “I've written a lot about the Black Death in the past. Assuming that there is something we can recognize as black dance, which is coherent and has an impact in the world, I now want to expand the research a little and think about what this black performance does. First we defined this topic and created a structure to understand its components, and now we ask what it does in the world and how it operates".
The performance program begins on Monday, October 24, with the performance of Dance On Ensemble, which received one of the awards at the recently concluded Bitef festival. This time, the ensemble presents the historical work "Works in Silence" by Lucinda Childs, the famous New York choreographer and one of the pioneers of contemporary dance.
"Works in Silence", a piece that provides an insight into the key phase of the development of one of the most important choreographers of the 20th century, will be performed at 8 pm, at the "Vlada Divljan" Cultural Institution. This collection of early works from Lucinda Childs' extensive repertoire is particularly exciting both because of its rare opportunity to perform it and because of its importance to the history of dance. Most of these works have not been seen since they were shown in the 1970s.
On the same day, at 18:30 in the UK "Vlada Divljan", Rok Vevar will give a lecture on the work of Lucinda Childs.
This year, the Kondenz Festival will be held from October 23 to 30 at several locations in Belgrade under the slogan "Radical Vulnerability", and a total of nine plays and performances will be performed, along with numerous lectures and discussions.
Photo: Marija Rodić, Magacin photo team
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