The ‘Neusamljeno osamljen solo na vezi’ dance performance by Jelena Alempijević will be premiered in the Svilara Cultural Station today, 30 July at 7 p.m. According to the author, this performance tries to communicate with spaces and bodies or ideas related to them. It deals with the ideas of caring for oneself and others.

It was created during several phases, and the final result is the performance which, in accordance with the epidemiological situation, the audience will have the opportunity to watch via the Facebook page of the Svilara Cultural Station.

‘The first phase took place during the period we spent in home isolation, in the period from March to May, with an echo that followed. At that time, I did not formulate it as a project. I went through various phases of dealing with body, movement and text in communication with friends with whom I exchanged these ideas. During that period and through those interactions, various materials and ideas accumulated which were later incorporated into the performance.

The second phase may be just the moment of decision that I want to work with these materials and in what way. Afterwards I submitted this performance to the Public Call of the ‘Artists. Now!’ project in order to have the conditions to develop my work,’ explains Jelena.

Jelena Alempijević also developed a dance practice during the development of her project, and she named the qualities of the practice: floating, rippling, curving and waving. These are the principles she established as a framework for dancing.

‘These are the parameters that help me set the task of moving, to establish relationships between body parts, my body towards other bodies, space and the sense of the time flow. Trying them separately – together, complexing them, dealing with them, they became part of my (almost) everyday dance practice. Dance practice is a specific term that is related to independent dancers and implies time to engage in a certain way of movement that is directly related to the work of art, by making it or helping it,’ says Jelena Alempijević.

During the first wave of the pandemic and work on the qualities of floating, rippling, curving and waving, Jelena shared this practice online, and organised live events ‘Alive Friday’ through the Instagram page of the ‘Pokretnica’ collective. She also hosted two episodes of the ‘Per.Art’ online programme of the ‘Pokret u metar kvadratni’ organisation, and afterwards she applied for the ‘Artists“. Now!’ project. According to her, the potential of the call was to gain the conditions to develop a performance or at least some part of the work that could be upgraded later.

‘It served me as a framework to implement what I was working on since I lacked funds. When I think about the way in which the development of the scene can be helped, I think about the programme frameworks that are long-term and are not exclusively focused on production, but on creating conditions for continuous work and cooperation of artists at the local level.
‘Artists. Now!’ is a programme framework that helps the implementation of one-time small-scale projects and in the period when everything stopped, it can be a convenient motivation for local artists in times of crisis. However, when we talk about the development of the scene, we should think about continuity’, adds Jelena.

The ‘Neusamljeno osamljen solo na vezi’ dance performance is one of 22 projects that received funding in the ‘Artists. Now!’ public call. Aims of the ‘Artists. Now!’ project of the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation are to strengthen Novi Sad cultural scene through a network of cultural stations, raising its capacities, decentralisation of culture and audience development.

Partner in the ‘Artists. Now!’ project is Mercator S.

Photo Credit: V. Veličković