THE ARTIST IS ABSENT!
The contemporary dance performance The Artist Is Absent! by Tijana Malek, a second-year master’s degree student in Artistic Dance, and Katarina Stojković, an alumnus of the Belgrade Dance Institute, will be held on April 21st at 7 pm at the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade.
The project premiered on December 5th, 2022, in Pančevo. The performance, produced by the DDT Creative Movement Center, was supported by the City of Pančevo, the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Belgrade Dance Institute, the Cultural Center of Pančevo, and the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade.
Performers: Luka Stojković, Katarina Bućić, Vladimir Čubrilo, Mila Stijak, Marija Vučenović, Dragana Stanisavljević, Danilo Stojković, Tijana Malek, Ivana Kompirović, and Ivan Mišić.
Choreography and direction: Katarina Stojković and Tijana Malek
Video montage: Katarina Stojković and Luka Stojković
Music: Danilo Stojković
Production: DDT Creative Movement Center
Synopsis:
The world has changed. It has changed for all of us. We all went through similar experiences during lockdown, exposed to restrictive measures that affected both individuals and society. Darwin observed that the species that survives is not the strongest but the one that adapts most quickly. The same goes for people.
DDT Creative Movement Center faced an interesting challenge this season – to combine contemporary dance, conceptual art, and theater. “The Artist Is Absent!” follows the lives of artists from different fields and parts of the world during lockdown. The story is led by Nikola and Ena, young artists who invested everything they had to rent a studio apartment and start a life together just a few days before lockdown, facing all the obstacles that modern confinement brings.
How can an artist adapt to working from home, online Zoom classes, disrupted existence, and other challenges? This is the theme of our performance. These problems are still present because it is difficult to fit art into an online frame. The contemporary dance expression, along with the many choreographic and directorial tools we used and the choice of comedy as a genre, makes the performance easy to understand.
“The Artist Is Absent!” is also an ironic commentary on conceptual art, which is sold for large sums of money worldwide. What can artists do who have been living and working in Serbia for decades, educating young dancers and artists in a domestic environment where existence is impossible even without a pandemic?
