Aldo Milohnić

The publication edited by Aldo Milohnic and Ana Vujanovic deals with one of the most important topics in contemporary performing arts – the relationship between performance and politics. The discussion includes questions such as the following: What is the meaning of these notions nowadays and how are they (dis)connected? Why is there such a preoccupation with the political in the performing arts today? Might it merely be an alibi concocted to secure the support of public funds? Maybe it is a desperate attempt to be recognised as a socially relevant practice? Or is it just the neo-liberal capitalist state of affairs, which blurs the borders between different social practices and where some old questions – such as how we practise politics and where politics is located today – are still waiting for an answer? With this issue of TkH journal we want to provoke thinking from different angles and to offer answers to a rather simple and direct but challenging question: what is the political scope of performance in the current, neo-liberal capitalist and democratic social context?

The publication edited by Bojana Cvejic and Ana Vujanovic deals with the "social choreography" both as a theoretical notion and artistic tool. As a theoretical notion proposed by the literary scholar Andrew Hewitt, it refers to embodiment as the mechanism of ideology, replacing discursive interpellation and claiming that ideology operates as the performance of an embodied ritual, without any belief involved. In parallel, a number of choreographers and artists use the term “social choreography” to describe their practices or political concerns. Moreover, in the past few years we have witnessed how that term has come to stand for a dance equivalent of community, socially engaged, and participatory art.