Residency
Temporary Slovene Dance Archive
Archive research · Slovenia · 2026
An embodied research methodology that activates photographs, records, and archival traces through gesture, rhythm, bodily memory, and speculative attention.
The residency at The Temporary Slovene Dance Archive (TSDA) explored the relationship between archival research and embodied choreographic practice. Working closely with dance historian and archive founder Rok Vevar, I investigated how historical dance materials could be activated through movement rather than treated as static documents.
Using photographs, written records, and archival traces from Slovenian and Balkan dance histories, I developed an embodied research methodology that translated archival material into studio practice. Rather than attempting to reconstruct historical dances, the research asked what an archival image cannot reveal. How might the body respond to the gaps, ambiguities, and invisible qualities that remain beyond the photographic document?
Through daily studio iterations, I explored gesture, rhythm, bodily memory, and attention as ways of entering into dialogue with the archive. Each movement study became a speculative encounter with history, allowing contemporary choreographic practice to unfold through interpretation, transformation, and embodied imagination rather than historical reproduction.
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