choreography & performance: Milka Djordjevich
music: Chris Peck, lighting: Madeline Best, costume: Reid Bartelme; eyes: Rebecca Brooks

photo credit: Brian Rogers

Kinetic Makeover is a dance solo giving power and autonomy to one body. This body attempts to produce various images through the self-imposed task of repeatedly and compulsively moving.  Perpetual action is a means for change in order to establish a new way of seeing and being. The various thresholds of the body are revealed through this self-directed persistence. Actions oscillate between being repetitive, mechanical, mundane, sustained, hypnotic, energetic, aggressive and euphoric. The act of doing is always in negotiation of the past, present and future. The dance is an attempt at the here-and-now, a never-ending effort that ceases to exist. The work is a reimagining of the body and its potential, what it represents and how it exists.
Commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater, developed at Performing Arts Forum (pa-f.net), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space, The Garage and Workspace Brussels, Belgium.

Milka Djordjevich is a dance artist motivated by a desire to blur the distinction between ‘dance’ and ‘non-dance’ by attempting to un-choreograph choreography and choreograph spontaneity. Her work has been shown at several venues including REDCAT, Pieter and Machine Project (Los Angeles); the 2010 Whitney Biennal, the Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project and AUNTS (New York); Counterpulse and The Garage (San Francisco); Uferstudios (Berlin); Bitef (Belgrade); Artdanthe (Paris); WUK (Vienna); Fabrik (Potsdam); Solo in Azione Festival (Milan); Toihaus Theatre (Salzburg); Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (UK). She has received funding from NYLA’s Suitcase Fund; a commission from the Danspace Project 2010-11 Commissioning Initiative, with support from the Jerome Foundation; and residencies at Fabrik Potsdam, PACT-Zollverein, Workspace Brussels, UCLA Hothouse, LMCC Swingspace, among others. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar. Her other projects include co-curating the Movement Research Spring Festival 2008: Somewhere Out There and serving as guest editor for Critical Correspondence. She has co-authored works with composer Chris Peck and choreographer Dragana Bulut and has performed for Heather Kravas, Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward, Sam Kim, Sasa Asentic and Ana Vujanovic, among others. Djordjevich received a B.A. from UCLA and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. thisismilka.com