Join CSEEES for our Graduate Student Lecture. Our spring 2024 talk entitled "Marija Leaves the Theatre: Reimagining the Dance Studio, Imagining Revolution" will be given by Marjana Krajač (PhD candidate, Department of Dance).
Abstract: Through the lens of art in relation to revolution, this lecture explores the meaning of dance during times of societal turmoil—a question posed by the character Marija, a ballet dancer in Branko Marjanović's feature film The Flag (Yugoslavia, 1949). Set during the Second World War, the film begins with Marija's decision to leave her life as a ballet dancer in the city theater and join the Yugoslav resistance movement in the forests and mountains. Sonja Kastl, a ballet dancer herself, takes on the role as an actress, poignantly capturing the turmoil and resilience of a dancer undergoing transformation while discovering new meanings for dance. The underlying theme is art's responsibility to engage with its environment, highlighting the relationship between art, society, and the individual, while reading dance as a constitutive aspect of the revolution. Expanding the referential scope of the movie, the discussion also includes other dance artists, interpreting The Flag and its main character Marija as connecting three dancers—Sonja Kastl, Margarita Froman, and Marta Paulin-Brina—through the historical context of Yugoslavia, while exploring the complex dialogue between art and revolution.
Speaker Bio: Marjana Krajač is a Dance Studies scholar, choreographer, choreographic researcher, and a Ph.D. candidate in Dance Studies at The Ohio State University. Her scholarly work explores the intersections of modernism, postmodernism, and contemporaneity in dance, focusing on site, space, environment, text, media, and process. Her research focuses on spatial histories and the politics of space, as well as the concept of dance and its experiment in Eastern European choreography and performance. She has received numerous awards for her choreographic work that explores symptoms, consequences, and temporalities of form. She has published in International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Body, Space & Technology Journal, Performing Arts Journal Frakcija, Dance Arts Journal Kretanja, and Movement Research Performance Journal, among others. Areas of her research include dance studies, literature, and choreography in Eastern Europe, architecture, urbanism, and environment, continental philosophy, critical theory, and film and media studies.
