DIS_Lecture is a series of lecture performances by artists with learning disabilities from Novi Sad, Warsaw, and Hamburg. In the frame of zoom webinars, Dalibor Šandor, Natalija Vladisavljević, Dennis Seidel, Maja Kowalczyk and Aleksandra Skotarek will share their artistic practices which they develop in the field of contemporary performing arts. These artists are invited to appropriate the format of the lecture performance and challenge its ableism.
They will reflect on dance, disability, text and body politics, as well as on the states of exclusion, isolation and resistance. Together with their long-term collaborators, they enter a sector from which they are historically excluded: the field of theory and discourse on dance and performance.

DIS_Lecture is created by Saša Asentić as an accessible format that contributes to the critical culture and solidarity in dance. Its aim is to create conditions for disability dance and performance artists to come together and share their work in public.

DIS_LECTURE on Work in pitch dark
by Natalija Vladisavljević

In Serbian with simultaneous translation into German and English spoken language as well as German sign language, with English subtitles
Duration: ca. 35 minutes

Natalija Vladisavljević works with different ways of creative text editing and writing. She reads, underlines, cuts out, transcribes, rewrites, copies, draws, composes. Invited to speak about herself as an artist she immediately redirects the question: Who knows her best? To those she assigned the role of talking together with her about her in public. The result is a choreography of text, movement and sound in pitch-dark based on her score and performed by her dear friends and collaborators: Olivera Kovačević Crnjanski, Milena Minja Bogavac, Frosina Dimovska, Dunja Crnjanski, Alexandre Achour and Saša Asentić.

There is contemporary dance without music, and there is contemporary dance without dance.
Natalija Vladisavljević in Dance in the 21st Century

Natalija Vladisavljević is a choreographer, writer and performer. Natalija has published two books of poems, short stories and short plays. She writes about contemporary dance, conducts choreographic workshops, devises textual and graphical scores for choreography. Since 1999 she has been member of Per.Art and is working with the group on her new performance Dance in the 21st Century. She would sit at a round table. She is happy.

DIS_LECTURE on Body-to-Body with Marilyn
by Maja Kowalczyk and Aleksandra Skotarek

In Polish with simultaneous translation into German and English spoken language and German sign language, with German and English subtitles
Duration: ca. 60 minutes

A woman, a goddess of wisdom and beauty
a woman butterfly
a woman who moves the world of Downs with her ways
A woman looks at the sky slightly
I see a star and the moon
I see my world
Woman Marilyn Monroe

In their artistic work, Maja Kowalczyk and Aleksandra Skotarek from Teatr 21 examine the gaze: how is the disabled body perceived in public and society? How does it determine the life possibilities of people with cognitive disabilities? Kowalczyk and Skotarek explore the boundaries between rigid binaries such as normal/anormal, human/non-human, male/female. They use manifestos and theatrical means to tackle taboos around disability. One of them is loneliness caused by isolation. In the lecture performance Body-to-Body with Marilyn the poetics of the Butterfly Woman unfolds. Viewers become confidants of this moving testimony.

Maja Kowalczyk is a dancer and actress and has been working with Teatr 21 for 15 years. She plays the saxophone, loves poetry, visual arts and music. Aleksandra Skotarek is an actress and has been working with Teatr 21 for 15 years. She is very emotional and sensitive. She likes to read psychological and biographical books, her favorite biography is the one about Michael Jackson. For the project Body-to-Body with Marilyn, Justyna Wielgus and Justyna Lipko-Konieczna took on the role as confidants of an intimate conversation.

The event takes place as a webinar via the Zoom video conferencing platform. Please update your Zoom version to the latest update before attending. You can download our manual on how to participate here. Please note the above mentioned details on language, translation and subtitles. There will be a brief technical introduction at the beginning of the event. The evening is divided into two parts: The first Lecture Performance lasts about 35 minutes, the second one about 60 minutes. There will be a 10-minute break in between. After each performance there is the possibility to leave written feedback and comments in the chat. To register, please click here. If you have any questions or need information about accessibility, please contact Gina Jeske at jeske@sophiensaele.com or +49 30 27 89 00 35.