Moody Drifts: Affective Resistance is a site-specific dance performance and screening that explores the bodily poetics of resistance in post-socialist spaces. Drawing from affect theory—the piece investigates how collective movement embodies political tension, memory, and resistance.

The work references the Yugoslav mass choreographies known as Slet, the mourning gestures of Romanian modernist dancer Miriam Răducanu, and the physical vocabularies emerging from recent Serbian student protests—including repetitive running, jumping, and synchronized gestures of togetherness. These movement materials are recontextualized in response to contemporary crises: the rise of right-wing politics, democratic decline, state violence, and injustice.

The project premiered at the National Dance Centre Bucharest, Romania, in December 2024, and was later presented in an expanded version at Theater Rampe in Stuttgart, Germany (2025), as part of the season opening Learning from the East. In this context, an additional spatial layer emerged: the performance took place on a train parking lot above active train tracks, introducing a direct reference to industrial and transport infrastructures—and how moving bodies relate to them.

The choreography draws on structures from Yugoslav mass dances, originally designed to foster unity among youth across the country and embody anti-fascist solidarity. The dancers rehearsed simplified, aligned movements—marching steps, monumental gestures of strength and resistance, as well as folkloric, circular formations with intertwined hands. These patterns explored how rhythmic alignment can amplify a sense of equality, connection, and collective power. Whereas such dances in former Yugoslavia were intended to be viewed from above, forming large-scale images, Moody Drifts brings the audience to the same ground level—close to the performers, immersed in the shared space of the choreography.

The research phase included embodied interventions in public space, notably a performative study at the House of the Free Press in Bucharest, a building emblematic of Ceaușescu-era propaganda. In this setting, the body is foregrounded as both archive and agent—capable of holding, resisting, and transmitting lived experience beyond language.

Moody Drifts: Affective Resistance was developed in collaboration with Eliza Trefaș, Georgia Elza, and Sergiu Diță, dancers from Bucharest, Romania, each bringing distinct embodied language.

Sound track of 35 minutes directed by Neda Kovinic, Sound Design: Bojana Knežević

Vocals, readings, noise by Bojana Knezevic, Nevena Radulovic, Neda Kovinic, flute by Marina Rossi,

terrain recordings from protests in Serbia, noise by Lukatoyboy

Songs part of the soundtrack: Uz Marsala Tita by Young Bosnia Remixes used in a full length

Wayang 06 by Mitar Subotic Suba used in a full length

20/44 by Ex Ponto fragmented, used 5 minutes

Po Sumama i gorama by Kolibri used a fragment of 2 minutes , found on Youtube, was not realised as a record

Costume Design Support: Maria Corlade
Produced with support from: ARC Bucharest, The National Dance Centre Bucharest, Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart)

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