Performing Gender Workshop at City of Women Festival

City of Women Festival 2018 

Egon Schiele, The Friends, 1912

Performing Gender - Dance Makes Differences

A workshop with dance-maker Koldo Arostegui González and dance dramaturg Tea Hvala

September 30th-October 6th 2018, ŠD Tabor, Ljubljana

At the workshop, the choreographer and the dramaturg will share their experiences and skills acquired through the two-year international project Performing Gender – Dance Makes Differences with ten young dancers, selected through an open call. The project investigates gender and dance, and provides skills useful in developing new forms of narrative for LGBTIQ identities in Europe.

Gender as a game, as a layer of our identity that we can transform and play with to express ourselves. Gender as a costume we wear, a song we sing, a poem we forget…

(Koldo A. Gonzalez)

We are going to use movement as a tool to get a profound insight into gender, in the ways it is written in and all over our bodies. We aim to create a safe space and playful atmosphere that will allow us to reflect on this topic, look for new ways of understanding it as well as experiment with our genders in a performative and collective context. We will look for the movement that is already there, happening in our bodies. Not knowing which shape it will take, but being a channel for it.

Participants: Martina Delprete, Sara Gorinjac, Vesna Hauschild, Slobodan Malić, Urška Medved, Alicia Ocadiz, Silvia Pederzani, Giacomo Pini, Maša Radi, Danijela Zajc.

About the participants

About the workshop (short interview with Koldo and Tea)

About the Performing Gender project 

The sharing (public presentation) of the workshop: 

Saturday, October 6th at 17h, at ŠD Tabor, Ljubljana

Free entrance.

Production and organization: City of Women.

European cooperation project: Performing gender - Dance makes differences.

Začel se je projekt Uprizarjati spol - ples razlik

Vzporedno z letošnjim Mestom žensk so v Ljubljani potekale prve vaje iz projekta Uprizarjati spol - ples razlik, dvoletnega sodelovanje med Italijo, Slovenijo, Španijo, Nizozemsko in Anglijo. Namenjen je raziskovanju spola in plesa, osrednje vprašanje pa je, kje se ples kot živa, uprizoritvena oblika umetnosti sreča s spolom kot živim, utelešenim uprizarjanjem jaza.

Projekt vključuje pet ustvarjalk_cev in pet dramaturginj_ov, ki se usposabljajo in ustvarjajo v vseh omenjenih državah. Prvo usposabljanje v Ljubljani je potekalo med 7. in 13. oktobrom. Sodelovali smo: Koldo Arostegui González, Roberta Racis, Jija Sohn, Sophie Unwin, Nataša Živković in jaz.
Sem v vlogi plesne dramaturginje, kar mi je novo. Učim se.

The questions are many. Who is qualified to perform this role and why? What is the impact on how and what a choreographer makes? Is dramaturgy interference, intrusion or is it filling in where there is a lack of some kind? Does it perform a need for the market of dance making? Is the dramaturge a translator, interrogator, a 'prober', interpreter or provocateur? Does dramaturgy function as a support in the lonely act of making or does it split the body of the choreographer in two? (V: Scott deLahunta, Dance Dramaturgy: speculations and reflections Dance Theatre Journal, April 200)


V okviru projekta sem zasnovala tudi pogovor Družine drugače in pletla Mesto mrež, srečanje mednarodnih feminističnih in queerovskih umetniških mrež.

Program celotnega projekta bo združeval širok razpon dejavnosti, kot so praktične in teoretične delavnice, razprave in sestanki, srečanja s strokovnjakinjami_ki in umetnicami_ki ter intenzivno delo z dramaturginjo.


Fotografije Nade Žgank z zaključnega šeranja petih umetnic_kov v Stari elektrarni.
Video Tina Šulc.