Milka Djordjevich
Bob
Bob is a manic whirlwind of methodical rapid-fire movements, dictated, performed and self-enforced by Milka Djordjevich. Set to throbbing music composed by Djordjevich, Bob eroticizes the labor of the dancing body–the repetition, the discipline, and the fallout. A mid-career taxonomy of sorts, Djordjevich confronts demands to optimize her female body and the market’s expectation to enhance her performance over time. Bob is an alter ego trained to be so skilled as to become other–the perfect kinetic subject in the service of her audience. Algorithmic movement patterns conjure approaches from trance, folk ritual and rite–they become a means to no end. A reflection rivaling the self, Bob is on a rampage with and against self-consciousness in order to bask in reverie, delusion, desire and rage. Show no mercy!
Bob is commissioned by the American Dance Festival with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works. The development of Bob was made possible in part by MOCA Los Angeles and is produced by STANA, who is supported by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan.
Live Artery 2025 is made possible in part with generous support from the following contributors: Anonymous, Betsy Berne, Amy Cassello, Christine Dakin, Cathy Edwards, Rachel Mckinstry, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Kathy Westwater.
Bob
Choreographed by: Milka Djordjevich
Performed by: Milka Djordjevich
Music by: Milka Djordjevich
Lighting Design by: Madeline Best
Design Advising by: Shannon Scrofano
BIOGRAPHIES
Milka Djordjevich is a choreographer, performer and educator who questions preconceived notions of what dance should or should not be. Her work draws from a variety of compositional strategies to examine gender in so-called “neutral” public spaces of theaters, galleries, and museums.
Her last evening length work CORPS–co-commissioned by New York Live Arts and REDCAT with development support from Jacob’s Pillow, the Baryshnikov Arts Center and MANCC–is a continuation of Djordjevich’s ongoing questioning of movement practices, preoccupied with producing neutrality and anonymity and aims to disorient the militaristic conditioning of groups “keeping together in time.” Her critically acclaimed quartet, ANTHEM (2017), explores labor, play, and feminine-posturing, and was developed as a part of a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellowship, received a Bessie nomination for outstanding performer and toured across the country at venues such as the LA Dance Platform at the Ghebaly Gallery, PICA’s TBA: 18, Philadelphia Thing, Santa Ana Sites and the Chocolate Factory Theater. Her long-standing collaborations with composer Chris Peck challenge conventional partnerships between choreographers and composers, rediscovering music as a practice of the body and dance as a mode of listening. Their work MASS (2015), premiered at The Kitchen, with additional performances at Show Box LA/Bootleg Theater and the American Realness Festival. Djordjevich’s works have also been presented at the Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, The Whitney Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, and internationally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK.
Other projects include serving as co-editor for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence, initiating the Monday Class series at Pieter in Los Angeles and choreographing and movement directly film, visual art, opera and theater projects. Djordjevich was a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist Grant recipient (2020), a two-time danceWEB Europe Scholar (2008/2010) and a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence (2006-2007). She has taught at CalArts, Wesleyan University, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), Pomona College, Pasadena City College, and University of California at Irvine, Riverside and Los Angeles, among others. Djordjevich received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2016, she established STANA, an organization cultivating local, national and international dance connections. www.thisismilka.com
Madeline Best is a Lighting Designer, Performer, and Director of Operations at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Best’s design practice comes from an interest in the way light affects space and the way the light feels as an audience member or performer. Her lighting design subtly supports the work of collaborative artists. Recent projects have included the following artists Moriah Evans, Katy Pyle/Ballez, Heather Kravas, Ursula Eagly, Milka Djordjevich, efrian rozas, luciana achugar, Andrea Kleine, Anne-B Parson/Big Dance Theater, and more. Madeline grew up in Durham, North Carolina. Best studied at Bennington College and currently lives in Long Island City, Queens.
Shannon Scrofano is a Los Angeles-based designer whose work includes interdisciplinary performance, public space, exhibition, curation and dialogue projects internationally and throughout the US. Her work has been seen at venues including the National Cultural Center in Kampala, PICA’s TBA, the Berlinale, the Getty Villa, REDCAT, El Teatro Público in Havana, Prague Quadrennial, the Mistake Room, SF MOMA, the Ostrava Festival, and the Tribeca Film Festival, as well as in city halls, car dealerships, warehouses, desert expanses, under bridges, and on rooftops and ranches, and has been supported by organizations including ArtPlace, National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, AICAD, Creative Capital, YBCA, the Surdna Foundation, TCG, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She teaches design at CalArts.
FUNDING CREDITS
Bob is commissioned by the American Dance Festival with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works. The development of Bob was made possible in part by MOCA Los Angeles and is produced by STANA, who is supported by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan.
