CoFestival 2026 – Dragana Alfirević & Dejan Srhoj: Imagine

The performance, created by the two choreographers in collaboration with the collective Pokretnica from Novi Sad, questions how contemporary dance and choreography can stimulate the imagination, allowing us to picture something that at first seems unimaginable.

In 1964, the Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono exhibited her contemporary artwork Grapefruit in the form of an artist’s book. This collection of short instructions, scores and recipes was conceived as a training exercise for the viewer’s imagination. One of the series of instructions in the book always begins with the imperative Imagine…! No other neo-avant-garde work of the past century has had a more famous response than this particular series, as her husband John Lennon chose to respond to it with the pop song “Imagine,” released on the album of the same title (1971). Yoko Ono’s gesture activates viewers’ emancipation through calls to participation, imagination and courage — a kind of basic handbook for the conditions of contemporary art.

The performance Imagine by Dragana Alfirević and Dejan Srhoj, created in collaboration with the Novi Sad collective Pokretnica and its associates, under the motto of imagining the impossible, engages with the problem of public imagination and labour in our desolate social present, drawing inspiration from the creators of the Novi Sad Neo-avant-gardes of the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Its choreographic production and creation shift emerges from personal and collective interests represented on equal terms within a collective artistic work, one in which the need for a finished product does not erase the significance of the process. The performance explores materiality and physicality through imagining the (im)possible: the possibility of collective presence. It draws on the past, on uncovering and understanding it, in search of the possibility that the future might one day become possible again. On stage, contemporary dance and choreography become tools for the collective imagining of the unimaginable: resisting the predictable, embracing what remains open and uncertain. Five female dancers, a musician and a protest choir lead us through questions about dance and performance, about imagining how to be together, how to collaborate, how to watch dance.

Imagine was created in co-production by SKCNS (Novi Sad), Kino Šiška (Ljubljana), Praktikabl (Novi Sad) and Nomad Dance Academy (Ljubljana), as part of the Moving Balkans project, co-funded by the European Union. The performance was also supported by the Provincial Secretariat for Education, Regulations, Administration and National Minorities of Vojvodina, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, and the project FUSION – Contemporary Forms of Art and Sociality, developed in collaboration with the French Institute in Serbia and the Teatroskop programme, with the financial support of the French Embassy in Serbia.

* The performance will be held in Serbian with English translation.

Choreography: Dragana Alfirević, Dejan Srhoj
Co-creators and performers: Jelena Alempijević, Anna Javoran, Jovana Rakić, Frosina Dimovska, Željka Jakovljević
Set, Space and Lighting Design: Željka Jakovljević
Costume Design: Dajana Ljubičić
Composer and Musician: Dunja Crnjanski
Sound Design: Žolt Polgar
Dramaturgy: Igor Dobričić
Choir: Zbor Radio
Conductor: Dušica Stojković
Graphic Design: Ivana Đurđević

Co-produced by: SKCNS, Kino Šiška, Udruženje Praktikabl – platforma za savremenu umetnost i kulturu Novi Sad, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija.

With the support of: Moving Balkans; Teatroskop; French Embassy in Republic of Serbia, French institute in Serbia, Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia

Organised by Kino Šiška and NDA Slovenija, in collaboration Zavod Bunker

With the support of: EU project Moving Balkans

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.