1st Block | START BEFORE YOU’RE READY!

ANTISEZONA is entering its eighth year of curating dance performances and dance-related formats: discursive, experimental, intermedial, intrarelational… In numerology, the number eight symbolises power, abundance, material success and the balance between the spiritual and material world, while in the sphere of cultural politics, eight years represent solidarity, endurance, adaptability, continuously renewing inspiration, friendship and deep respect. 

Cheers to our number eight!

We’re starting as early as February this year, announcing with our programme selection:START BEFORE YOU’RE READY! This sentence is most familiar to us, both personally and professionally, as one of the principles of Deborah Hay, the renowned American dance artist and pioneer of the postmodern in dance, an inexhaustible source of inspiration and wisdom, as found in texts about her artistic practice, as well as in person. “Start before you’re ready!” is Deborah’s invitation to the raw, immediate presence of the body, to the radical rejection of rigid, pre-determined dance forms and to not take anything for granted within the space and duration of performance.

The block starts on February 19th with the work of young dance artist Lea Brcko and her collaborators, Antun Antolović and Timon Špalj, called The Last Farewell of the Collection of Forgotten Bugs. Not only is it the final result of the research project Chaos as a Choreographic Procedure – Between Performance and Concert, this work is also Lea’s final piece for the Undergraduate Program in Contemporary Dance at ADU, Zagreb. Lea is bringing a collage of sound, rhythm and movement that emerges from the chaos of accumulating material during performance-making, affirming accumulation and rearranging chaos into an exciting performative experience.

Returning to Gorgona’s stage the same evening are Close Encounters of the Dance Kind, now subtitled Gorgona Is Burning, Bitter, Proud and Crimson!, an improvised performance of artists included in this early block, entirely in keeping with the quote in the block’s title. Don’t miss it; once this performance burns out, only the legends spoken by its witnesses will remain.

Slithering around Gorgona on February 20th and 21st is Ouroboros, last year’s premiere performance by choreographer Silvia Marchig, dramaturg Nina Gojić, composer Ana Kovačić, and co-authors and performers Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Silvija Dogan, Ana Novković and Mia Štark, produced by Kik Melone. Ouroboros doesn’t have an announcement for us, but a prophecy: “(…) something will remain risky, while something else will dance the celebration of the end. Spirits will be walking backwards because that’s how they will have returned. Everything will be sacred, and everything will be important. Some things will remain opaque, that’s how we will keep finding out. One day, the sadness will end.”

Also on February 21st, in the afternoon hours at TALA PLE(j)S, is Fani Pozidi, who is presenting her work-in-progress, Growing a Mane. Fani is joining us from STUK, an interdisciplinary artistic center in Leuven (Belgium), for a residency at TALA PLE(j)S, as part of the Life Long Burning EU project. During her residency she’s exploring themes of effort, futility, surrender and giving up as an act of resistance.

Gathering once again in this block of ANTISEZONA is the reading-and-watch club The 11 Foxes Society. The foxes are starting this year off with Tea Tulić and her acclaimed novel Old World Vultures.

The world is turning, 2026 is passing and ANTISEZONA is inviting, refusing to wait: Let’s start – before we’re ready! With trust, courage and no holding back. We look forward to seeing you at our events, dear audience!