Dear Ana,
Are you cold? These days, the wind outside cuts like a razor, making the air on your face feel like ice or an open wound—yet still, in its own way, beautifully, properly cold. Are you hot, or just perfectly warm? Isn’t it fascinating how ice, when it engulfs us, burns just like fire when we burn?
What do you dream about—do you remember? Do you dream of flying or falling, the sea or flames? Do you ever dream of dancing? Is it possible to dance in a dream? Is it anything like dying?
At the intersections of reality and dreams, memory and forgetting, time and timelessness, choose six photographs from your archive, from your dance history, and tell us six stories.
1. First, the oldest dance photo you have—describe when and how it was taken.
Maybe not the oldest, but one of the older ones I could dig up!
The year is 1985, The Conquest of the Theatre, a cult performance by the Zagreb Youth Theatre. I’m the third person in the photo. Alongside the then-members of ZKM, the three of us played the roles of dancers. I performed a lot as a child, from an early age. For me, that was it, and here I am, still following that path today.
This performance was a huge event in my young life; it was my first serious professional engagement. But what this photo really reminded me of was that I was actually supposed to be in the center of this trio formation (which is, after all, the central position—hahahaha), but then my then-colleague pushed her way in, literally shoved me aside, and stepped onto the stage before me. It still sounds unbelievable to me today, let alone from the perspective of an 8-year-old for whom that moment was their entire universe.
Injustice, intrusion, and being pushed aside are things I still don’t handle well, and I’m incredibly sensitive to those traits—I don’t tolerate them at all. The girl who elbowed her way in didn’t stay in dance, while I still passionately believe that dance fosters entirely different values and that it can build a better world.
2. Photographs are eerie parades of the past, present, and future; they emerge as traces of an absolute, unrepeatable moment so that they can carry that past present into the future—a present that will never exist again, yet will remain forever. Dance, on the other hand, slips through all times—trembling in the present, always reaching for the future, and scattering into an invisible past, elusive. You’ve been reflecting a lot on time lately, but let’s save those thoughts for the next question. For now, tell me—where and how, if at all, do dance and photography intersect?
I really like how you’ve described this image—how and where dance unfolds. And it is just as vibrant as photography, across all three of those different temporal aspects.
I’d say both dance and photography come to life in that intersection of the present moment, in the eye of the viewer, the witness—while also gathering all the ghosts of the past and future. Dance, of course, leans more towards the future, just as you described, because it disappears from the present, while photography follows us into the future, something we can always return to. Both are charged with meaning, associations, memories, and emotions, always in relation to the observer and to where we are at that moment in time.
3. Let’s talk about time now. Let’s talk about time—now. Where does your fascination with time come from, and what does time mean to you? Diachronic and synchronic, Chronos and Kairos, meteorological time and the kind that contains history—the kind that is hard to see from the inside… Why do you think time has become so significant for you right now, and what have you learned about it through dance?
Ooooh, that’s a complex question! It feels overwhelming, but let me start from one angle.
I’m interested in actuality—how it reflects in what I do, in what I dance, in what I create. And that’s what fills our dance, colors it, shapes it, interprets it.
Of course, within that, all our past dances are contained—every performance danced and undanced—shaping and coloring its present actuality. How does it color it? How does it do that? In what way does it break into some current interest? That’s what’s occupying my mind right now.
What do I dance today, when I dance? What thoughts and decisions navigate my movement? What do they produce, and what do they bring to the surface?
4. Show us now a photography for which you would say there are no words—say nothing. After all, memories are sometimes like that.
5.Which photography would be your self-portrait as an artist at this moment in your dance story/history?
6. Show us a photography of the future of dance and tell us what you see in it—especially what we might not notice at first glance.
I couldn’t find the right photo, so I’ll take this chance to create one with words—if you’ll allow me!
The city—streets, squares, shops, schools—dance breaks through the crowd. It starts gently, catches just a few at first, and little by little, it’s everywhere, in every body. Maybe just in a detail, a flicker of the eye or the movement of a little finger, or maybe it takes over the spine, the pelvis, the shoulders, the head. The streets vibrate, the air thickens, and happiness releases its own hormone. It’s not an obligation, nor an effort—it’s simply utopia.
7. I have lied shamelessly, despite the written record. But when it’s not wicked, a lie can be a crack leading to a different past-present-future, a twist away from the expected, an admission of the fragility of all our fictions. So, here’s the seventh question: Can dance lie?
I think I’d speak more about transparency when thinking about dance—how it reveals itself, manifests, unfolds, is perceived, exposed, twisted, and comes into being before our eyes and within our bodies.
And because of all this, sometimes dance can be in conflict—with itself. In trying to express one idea, others emerge instead, rising to the surface. In that sense, it cannot hide—hahaha—and yes, in that way, maybe it can’t lie, even if it wanted to. It’s brutal how much it actually reveals.
But then again, like everything else—when you truly look, the world is much more transparent than we think.