STATION Service for contemporary dance is a bottom-up initiative of the contemporary dance and performing arts community in Serbia, established in 2005. It has been working towards making that community strengthened, structured, and recognized as a dynamic, critical and inclusive player on a local, regional and international cultural scene.
What we do:
– We support development of contemporary dance scene in Serbia through education, production and promotion of emerging and established artists, dancers and choreographers.
– We fight and advocate for the Balkan cultural cooperation and make our work through the platform Nomad Dance Academy as an example of successful regional collaborative platforms.
– We work on improvement of conditions for independent contemporary artists through our activist, advocacy and solidarity actions, as well as through academic collaborations in the field of cultural policy. Station has the status of representative artists’ association in the field of multimedia arts, which has brought us responsibility to regulate the artists’ social and economic status.
– We promote Serbian as well as Balkan contemporary dance artists internationally through our networks and international projects such as apap, Life Long Burning, DOPODO, GPS etc.
– We place contemporary dance to Serbian cultural map through our annual festival KONDENZ – Festival of contemporary performing arts and through organization of performances around Serbia.
– We produce new work and encourage experiment, transdisciplinary work and research.
– We established the only residency program for contemporary dance in Serbia – StationOne which brings international artists and dance experts to Serbia, but also allows the Serbian artists to go to various international residencies.
– We work of archiving Serbian and Yugoslav contemporary dance history as the only actor in this field. Although part of our cultural heritage, contemporary dance is neglected by existing institutions, so we have been trying to save it for future generations and scholars.
– Continuing the Nomad Dance Academy Education Program (2008/2010) as a unique dance education program in the Balkans, we established the program Puzzle which gives the informal long-term education to the emerging dance artists. It is the annual program which responds to the need of the young artists community, connecting the middle generation artists with the newcomers. It is free of charge for all participants.
– Together with Nomad Dance Academy, we established Critical Practice (Made in Yu) mentoring program for emerging writers on contemporary dance, theory and cultural policies, that gathered so far 30 young writers from 18 European countries.
Because of this wide range of activities, Station has an extensive network of national and international partners through Nomad Dance Academy, Association of Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia, European Dance House network, Kooperativa , ASSITEJ and many other individuals and organizations. Since 2007 Station operates in the independent cultural center Magacin where we have an office, exhibition space and one small studio which we offer for free to other actors of the independent contemporary performing arts scene in Belgrade.
