_{^{Non does not repeat. But it does rhyme.}}

NAM ChoreoLab
PREMIERE
27 & 28 JUN 2024@ Gorgona, MSU Zagreb (HR)

Conceived and created by NAM ChoreoLab, Such as Rhymes with Non, through the form of a performance essay, explores stagings of non-alignment and non-aligned choreography. NAM ChoreoLab is a modular choreography research project that deals with the historical and personal lineages – “days of future past” – of the Non-Aligned Movement. It rejects Cold War bipolarity by challenging (neo)imperialism and (neo)colonialism through an intersectional turn—intersection of body, race, gender, class, and nation. This is achieved by activating speculative verse, spectral video, disjointed dance, choreographed conversation, the dispositif of assembling, and an archive of gestures for the future.

The Non-Aligned Movement was set up as a movement of Third World states and Socialist Yugoslavia, rejecting the “double blackmail” of Cold War bipolarity of the US/USSR. It advocated for an “alternative globalisation” by challenging (neo)imperialism and (neo)colonialism. Amid contemporary intersecting crises, struggles, critiques, and breakdowns, NAM ChoreoLab asks: Who or what is ‘non’? Who or what is ‘aligned’? Who or what is ‘bloc’? Who or what are non-aligned bodies, gestures, subjects? Is ‘anti’ enough? Is ‘de’ enough? Who or what is under or beyond nation, state, movement? Is liberation enough? Is emancipation enough? How to assemble as non-aligned? Is sovereignty enough? Is agency enough?

NAM ChoreoLab is conceived and developed by the curatorial team of the (Non) Aligned Movements project (2021), by way of Nomad Dance Academy. The team includes choreographers and performers Sonja Pregrad (Croatia), Ana Dubljević (Serbia), and Viktorija Ilioska (North Macedonia), along with independent researcher and performer Dražen Dragojević (Slovenia). They align at the intersection of (queer) feminist dramaturgies, contextualized somatic practices, choreographic subjects, speculative and performative theory, archive and memory, decolonial historicism, and futurism. Together, they reassess—and re-align—non-alignment (along with the ‘singularity’ of Socialist Yugoslavia) for contemporary audiences, polities, and communities by way of choreography installation meets intermedia archive meets essay performance.