The Intercultural Influences in Contemporary Dance in Slovenia

Rok Vevar

The history of contemporary dance in Slovenia shows the consequence and coexistence of three primary aesthetic-cultural influences. In the first half of the 20th century, contemporary dance in Slovenia was both indirectly and directly exposed to the influence of Ausdruckstanz or new German dance. Starting in the 1960s, we saw the gradual sedimentation of American modernism, a result of the U.S. policy of using cultural exports as a warfare strategy in the Cold War. From the 1980s onward, the Flemish national cultural programme brought us its contemporary cultural products. The Slovenian cultural space embodied all these influences, used them and in their best cases radically reshaped them, returning them to the international space as authentic artistic innovations.

Rok Vevar is a theatre critic and essayist whose work is regularly published in national and foreign daily press and professional periodicals. He has participated as a mentor and lecturer of theatre criticism and the history and theory of performing arts in various seminars, particularly in the framework of the FIT network of festivals in transition (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Finland, Poland, etc.), and has been active in the programme of the network Nomad Dance Academy in the Balkan region. Two years ago – in his own flat in Ljubljana – he set up the Slovenian Temporary Dance Archive and has since presented it at Booksa in Zagreb and at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University (Cambridge, USA). He is the author of the book Rok za oddajo - izbrani članki in eseji [Deadline – Selected Articles and Essays].