Dance Cartography - Reimagining the Environment

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An artistic - ethnographic research project made in collaboration with anthropologist Mario Katić, dance artists Nataša Kustura and Dora Brkarić, dramaturge Nikolina Rafaj and videographer Vladimir Miketa.

The research focuses on developing a choreographic method specific to environments containing mirila - funeral memorials or stone monuments dedicated to the departed, unique to the Velebit mountain range and Bukovica near Zadar in Croatia.

 

The project was guided by several core questions: how to capture dance as an ephemeral art form; how to engage with the environment without leaving the physical trace in it; how to perform for non-human entities such as landscape, flora and local fauna.

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Blending scientific ethnographic tools with artistic research, the methodology explores the intersection of these two fields. How can different disciplines inform one another using the body as a sensory tool for exploration.

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The primary outcome of the research is a hybrid film that oscillates between documentary, art film and an ethnographic film. It captures the artists and the scientist during the fieldwork - doing ethnographic research, performing ad-hoc dance interventions in the environment before returning to the dance studio for reflection. 

It is a film about filmmaking, a hybrid between ethnographic field recording, a background of the choreographic process, and conceptual reflection on the media possibilities of dance.

Choreography is created in a direct reaction to the environment, an improvisational work with the specific space and place. It is negotiation between a conceptual frame of the research and embodied sensory experience.

 

“In this sense, Dance Cartography is a film about choreographic research as an epistemological practice. Matea Bilosnić does not offer the viewer a completed aesthetic object, but shows how that object is built, from what theoretical framework, through what method, with what consultations with an expert. Katić is not only a source of knowledge, but an interlocutor who asks the key question: “Is mirilo a ritual or is your dance more of a ritual and mirilo a theater?” In this way, the film also opens up a field of reflection on the limits of performativity. Where does authentic custom end and where does its artistic appropriation begin?”

Jelena Mihelčić for Plesna scena

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Author: Matea Bilosnić

Performers: Dora Brkarić & Nataša Kustura

Antropologist: Mario Katić

Dramaturge: Nikolina Rafaj

Videographer: Vladimir Miketa

Interlocutor: Anka Sjauš

Special thanks to: Zadar dance ensemble, Zadar youth centre

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The project was supported by Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media.

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