Profile

My research explores spatial dimensions of dance. I examine how dance produces knowledge through bodies, spaces, materials, and temporalities, and how environments and historical conditions shape and inform choreographic research as a broader mode of inquiry. My research brings together dance history and theory, archival investigation, urban and media studies, and studio-based or site-based movement practices. I work across dance theory and history; spatial and environmental humanities and dance studies; history of experimental arts, performance, and choreography in Central and Eastern Europe; experimental cinema and media; practice-as-research; artistic research; and choreographic inquiry.

Choreographic Work

My choreographic work is based on research processes and approaches choreography as a method of inquiry and a mode of thinking. Choreography becomes a lens for examining perception, spatial relations, historical conditions, and possibilities of collective experience. Site-specific and space-based, my works have been developed for museums, galleries, and public spaces, engaging with the architectures, histories, and conditions of specific environments. They function as choreographic interventions within the fields of performance, visual arts, and media arts, proposing choreography as a spatial and temporal object in movement that continuously transforms through bodies, environments, materials, and encounters.

My most recent choreographic series, Reconstructions (2025–2026–2027) explores relationships between choreography, landscape, materiality, and processes of transformation. Through durational, site-responsive performances, the series investigates how bodies encounter architectural and ecological environments, engaging questions of memory, histories, and temporal change. Developed for museums, it activates relationships between movement, place, and material traces.

Scholarly Work and Research

My scholarly work examines the intersections of choreography, spatial theory, and cultural history, with a focus on the artistic and political histories of Central and Eastern Europe. Through archival research and critical spatial analysis, I investigate how movement practices produce knowledge, engage built environments, and register broader social and political transformations. My research spans experimental choreography, feminist and avant-garde practices, and the relations between dance and material space. Forthcoming publications include a chapter on choreographer Milana Broš and Yugoslav avant-garde contemporaneity in 1970s Zagreb, as well as a research essay on the choreo-cinematic poetics of Vera Maletić’s 1968 experimental dance film A Choreography for Camera and Dancers. These projects reflect my interest in choreography as both artistic practice and inquiry into the spatial, historical, and political conditions of cultural production.

Doctoral Research

I received my Ph.D. in Dance Studies from Ohio State University in 2024. My dissertation, A Dance Studio as a Process and a Structure: Space, Cine-Materiality, Choreography, and Revolution—Zagreb, 1949–2010, examines the dance studio as a site where bodies, ideas, technologies, and histories are continuously organized and transformed. Dissertation Committee: Dr. Harmony Bench, (Department of Dance), Dissertation Advisor; Dr. Hannah Kosstrin (Department of Dance), Dr. Philip Armstrong (Department of Comparative Studies), Dr. Erica Levin (Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts), Candidacy.

The dissertation examines dance practice as entangled with spatial structures and expanded through their horizons, outcomes, and histories. A dance studio emerges as a space where dance archives and reconfigures spatial and societal transformations. The dissertation argues that this very process constitutes the structure of a dance studio: a space, practice, and environment continually reimagined, shaped, and conceptualized through dance and its experimental inquiry. Situated within the broader context of Central and Eastern Europe, the project contributes to discussions of avant-garde and experimental practices by examining how dance engages questions of modernity, artistic labor, and political imagination.

Pedagogy: Dance Across Artistic Practice, Critical Thought, and Cultural History

My pedagogy brings together critical theory, historical research, and expanded choreographic inquiry, emphasizing student agency, interdisciplinary thinking, collaboration, and knowledge as a process. Working across dance studies, spatial theory, performance, cultural history, and choreographic research, I invite students to investigate how bodies, artistic practices, and built environments shape lived experience and social relations. I approach dance in all its facets—theory, history, and practice—as a mode of inquiry and critical knowledge production that opens connections between experimentation, material conditions, and political life. Across these approaches, I emphasize process as an integral dimension of learning: a way to test ideas, attend to complexity, revise interpretations, and develop independent and collaborative forms of knowledge.

Research Presentations, Lectures, and Panels

Upcoming, Fall 2026

Kinetic Rhythm as Speculation: The Choreo-Cinematic Polyphony of Vera Maletić’s experimental film “A Choreography for Camera and Dancers,” Dance Studies Association Annual Conference themed Speculative Choreographies: Bodies, Economies, and Movement in a World in Flux, California State University, Long Beach, October 24, 2026.

Unknown Spaces of Feminist Modernism: Ana Maletić’s Early Dance Studios in 1930s Zagreb, Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies themed States and Empires, Chicago, IL, November 14, 2026.

Spring 2026

Co-Convener and Chair of the Organizing Committee of the Arts and Humanities Research Symposium Dance and Its Texts: Archives, Criticism, and Futures, Zagreb, April 15-16, 2026.

Exam Procedures—Poiesis and Praxis at the Threshold of the Book: Reading for Theory and the Discursive-Choreographic Transformation, paper presentation at the arts and humanities research symposium Dance and Its Texts: Archives, Criticism, and Futures, Zagreb, April 15, 2026.

Kinetic Rhythm as a Gesture: The Choreo-Cinematic Polyphony of Vera Maletić’s 1968 film ‘A Choreography for Camera and Dancers’, paper presentation at the artistic research symposium How do we rethink gesture?; Zagreb, March 28, 2026.

Presentation of the doctoral dissertation: A Dance Studio as a Process and a Structure: Space, Cine-Materiality, Choreography, and Revolution—Zagreb, 1949-2010, at the Department of Dance, University of Zagreb, March 10, 2026.

2025

Spatial Echoes: Choreographic Structures Shaped by Urban Environments in Zagreb and Eastern Europe, research presentation, Urban Humanities Conference 2, Washington University in St. Louis, October 16, 2025.

A Room for Movement: Ana Maletić’s 1932 Dance Studio in Zagreb as a Space, School, and Experiment of the Modern Body, research presentation, Conference Architecture and Housing Culture in Zagreb and Central European Cities 1880-1940, Institute of Art History in Zagreb, October 9, 2025.

Through Choreography and Sound: Critical Practice of Spatial Thinking, Research Talk, Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Antisezona, June 28, 2025.

Kinetic Rhythm: The Choreo-Cinematic Rhythm in Vera Maletić’s 1968 Film ‘A Choreography for Camera and Dancers’, Rethinking Rhythm in Film Symposium at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, May 22, 2025.

Reimagining Dance and Imagining Revolution: Marija Leaves the Theater in Branko Marjanović’s 1949 Film ‘The Flag’, Conference Resistance Movement Art of Yugoslav Partisans – How to Think About It, How to Remember It at Subversive Festival: An Interdisciplinary Platform for Film and Critical Theory, Zagreb, May 15, 2025.

Unfolding Spaces: Avant-Garde Engagements, Experimental Choreography, and Politics of Space in Milana Broš and Dubravko Detoni’s ‘La voix du silence’ at the 1973 Music Biennale Zagreb, Music Biennale Zagreb, April 7, 2025.

2024

Rethinking Structure—New Forms: Movement Spaces at the Workers and People’s University Moša Pijade in Zagreb, conference presentation, New Yugoslav Studies, Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies, Boston, November 23, 2024.

Research as Resistance: Dance Research as Methodology, Inquiry, and Political Practice, panel lecture, Transformative Policies for Dance—Futuring: Dance Research as the Foundation of a New Dance Institution, Choreographic Convention Zagreb, November 20, 2024.

A Dance Studio as a Process and a Structure: Space, Cine-Materiality, Choreography, and Revolution—Zagreb, 1949-2010, seminar lecture, East European and Eurasian Architecture Seminar, Topics in Architectural Theory, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University, October 21, 2024.

Spatial Layers and New Forms: Movement Spaces at the Workers and People’s University Moša Pijade in Zagreb, research lecture, Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Antisezona, October 17, 2024.

Unfolding Spaces: Avant-Garde Environments, Experimental Choreography, and Politics of Space in Milana Broš and Dubravko Detoni’s ‘La voix du silence’ at the 1973 Music Biennale Zagreb, presentation at DocTalk Series at the Emilio Ambasz Institute at MoMA, June 18, 2024.

Unfolding Spaces: Avant-Garde Horizons, Experimental Choreography, and Politics of Space in Milana Broš and Dubravko Detoni’s ‘La voix du silence’ at the 1973 Music Biennale Zagreb, conference presentation at the European Studies Council, Yale University, May 9, 2024.

Marija Leaves the Theater: Reimagining the Dance Studio, Imagining Revolution, lecture at the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Ohio State University, March 29, 2024.