Roberta Milevoj, biography / interwiev

Roberta Milevoj (HR) Started dancing at the age of 7 in the Studio for Creation Activities ZARO in Pula. She continued to attend professional workshops in Croatia and abroad participating in many international programs and workshops. From 1998, she has worked as dancer and performer in many productions by: MONTAŽSTROJ, Liberdance, Zagrebački plesni ansambl, Studio za suvremeni ples, Tala, Sodaberg, MARMOT and dance_lab collective. She has participated in many projects by distinguished choreographers and directors. From 2005, she has been developing her own authorial handwriting and has authored few independent, short and full lenght performances: TRIO (2005), materijal248 (2009), Roberta, Roberta (2011) in collaboration with video artist Matija Debeljuh,Rachel&Sonny (2012) in collaboration with Tomislav Feller. In 2010 she won the Croatian Actors’ Guild Award for the best female role in the performance Nastup. In 2011 she won the best production award at the Contemporary Dance Week for the show Roberta, Roberta. She is also working as a pedagogue in the field of contemporary dance. She is currently living and working on the relation Pula Zagreb.

 

INTERVIEW

 

G: Where are you starting from and how?

RM: I started dancing 27 years ago, in the period when you do not ask yourself why do you like something or not, it simply crawled under my skin and became indispensable part of my life.This is what happened to me with dance. Since then till now, an epithet of dancer has been followed me. This is how I was called by those who knew me and by those who didn’t know me. And through the years it became clear this is how I thought about myself too. Dance has defined me as a person in a great measure. It gives me an awful lot in terms of recognition and learning about myself, my ideas, interests and affinities. What I think and feel, that is what I dance, in a way.

Especially when we talk about the authorial work; I take my personal experience as a starting point, from within towards outside, and what it means for the audience with whom I share the experience, when it starts being important to them. But primarily to me, I start from the idea that inspires me at a particular moment. I can  be honest to that idea and then also to the “other participant” of that performance. In the working process phase this means finding the adequate tools that will construct the matter the performance will later be build of. I can not say I use a particular method of working, I’d rather say I know how to hear and sense what a particular process demands of me and this is how I approach each performance. I think there is always a kind of simultaneous intersecting, as I form the performance, the performance forms me too.

G: Which way are you going?

RM: I have never enrolled into a dance school or dance academy. I chose a direction in which it was a lot easier for me to function, outside the institution. Working at the same time with exceptional choreographers and dancers and dealing with early dance aesthetics and styles, nowadays I see it as a mitigating factor because from that kind of process and non-formal education I learned my ways and (non)methods in dance which seem very precious to me. I still work in similar way, I like to choose that which I consider best for myself in a given moment. Sometimes the outcome is better, sometimes is worse, but in this I see my happiness. Thereat, I am implying at the importance of being in a position to make choices.   When I think about what I had to go through on my way, I would say that each of us has had their own authentic experiences in life, and so have I. My dance influences have always come in various forms, from music, dance serials and films, older but also younger colleagues that have in various ways supported me or complemented my visions.

I love that there are people who point to my qualities and faults, encourage the faith in what I do, and when their talent, intelligence and ideas have a creative impact on me as a dancer, but also as a human being.

G: Where are you going to?

RM: I would love to work with people that I believe can contribute to my development in authorial, performative, and human sense. That includes dance, but also theatre and film media or any other medium that gives me a chance to discover something I still do not know about myself. Projects that set new challenges for me, projects in which I can surprise myself, that can remind me again why I love what I do and that will support my desire to work. When this is gone, I might take up on something completely different.