Zvonimir Dobrović created the Perforations Festival in 2009, along with a network of organizations and producers from the Balkans region with the goal of initiating and promoting regional cooperation and creating local and international opportunities for young and emerging artists. The new commissions and productions are presented at the annual Perforations Festival that takes place in Zagreb, Rijeka, and Dubrovnik, programming more than 20 new works by artists from Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the founder and program director of the Queer Zagreb festival, which has been taking place in Croatia since 2003. Queer Zagreb has presented more than 150 artists and performing companies from all over the world. Dobrović co-founded the Queer New York International Arts Festival with the late André von Ah in 2012. He is often invited to teach and hold workshops about curating, curatorial advocacy, and arts management around the world.
Bruno Isaković is a performer, choreographer, and teacher based in Zagreb. He graduated with a degree in contemporary dance from the Amsterdam School of the Arts in 2009. From 2011 to 2015 he was a member of Contemporary Dance Studio. Isaković has received various awards, including a Jury Award and Best Solo Dance Award at the Solo Dance International Festival in Budapest, and the 2016 Croatian national award for best choreographer for his work Denuded (ensemble version). His solo Denuded (2013) toured around the world and his work Disclosures premiered in New York in 2015. He is artistic director of the annual Sounded Bodies Festival in Zagreb.
Ina Sladić lives and works in Croatia and Germany. She continuously explores borders of performance art, phenomena of pop culture, social networks, and spectacle-oriented society in her works. Educated as a dancer at Folkwang University of Arts, Sladić has worked with various choreographers and performance artists including Xavier Le Roy, Marten Spangberg, Isabelle Schad, Johannes Wieland, Mike Kelley, Simone Forti, and Joan Jonas. She has also worked with Marina Abramovic since 2012; including a re-performance of Abramović’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Zagreb.
TukaWach was founded by the core creative team of Magdalena Tuka and Anita Wach, performers from theater and dance respectively. After working together in previous collaborations, the two were inspired to formally unite as a company. From 2013 to 2016 TukaWach was known as Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne after the Joseph Beuys artwork. Through its various fusions of new dramaturgy and multimedia experimentation, the narrative of a TukaWach show is never a linear cause-and-effect system of events but one open to fragmentation and deconstruction. Fiction is employed as a device for the performer-devisors to confront personal material though unfixed strategies.
Mia Zalukar studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and completed her BA in cultural management in Croatia. She has collaborated with many choreographers, including Marjana Krajač, Irma Omerzo, and Bruno Isaković. She was nominated for a Croatian Theatre Award in 2016 for her performances in Denuded and Disclosures by Bruno Isaković. She is a high school art teacher of stage performance, contemporary dance, and rhythmics.
Choreographer and performer Marta Ziółek studied humanities at the University of Warsaw before studying choreography at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Her work focuses on expanding the field of practice in choreography and the study of new forms of expression and embodiment. Ziółek has participated in workshops and collaborated with such choreographers and theoreticians as Bojana Cvejić, DD Dorvillier, Deborah Hay, Maria La Ribot, Trajal Harrell, Benoit Lachambre, Ann Liv Young, Xavier Le Roy, and Meg Stuart. Ziółek’s work has been presented in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, and the United States.
Via Negativa is a Ljubljana-based international platform for research, development, and production of contemporary performing arts. Founded in 2002, it operates under the artistic direction of theater director Bojan Jablanovec and is focused on devising and exploring different performing strategies, with an emphasis on ethics, performance practices, procedures, and genres. In addition to productions, Via Negativa conducts workshops as the VN Laboratory for Contemporary Performing Arts. Via Negativa has devised numerous projects that have been presented in 24 European countries and in the United States.