PROJECT // Take Care
For several years, I have been developing an ongoing series of performances as well as workshops titled Grief dances, individual and/or collective ritual making that uses movement, practices of magic, alongside reading as well as writing practices—language and utterance, both. With the grounding bedrock beliefs that grief is a generative resource and speech is an act, utterance a practice of spell casting as well as of art making, I will center poetic research and solo movement in developing an interdisciplinary and collaborative performance piece. It will invite dialogue and collective audience participation working with the themes of self and community care, illness and intergenerational trauma, war and the body, language, longing, and belonging. Using the lens of grief and ancestor work, my research and creation focus for this residency takes the form of inhabiting the pain body, exploring the war kid experience, witnessing, transforming, and taking care.
BIO // Aurora Prelević is a writer, performance artist, herbalist, and somatics teacher whose life and art alike center grief and ancestor work. As the first generation of her family born in Tiotià:ke/Montréal, she carries strong Yugoslav/Balkan roots. Her extensive background in yoga, meditation, contemporary improvisational dance, experimental movement practices, and other somatic forms informs her approach to movement as both ritual and performance, therapeutic and artistic. Aurora holds an interdisciplinary MA from the New School for Social Research situated at the intersection of memory, performance, and gender studies. Her work explores the edges of embodiment, pain and illness, violence, war, and inter and transgenerational trauma. Aurora lives with chronic pain and illness, which informs her approach to teaching, art making, and everyday existence. Connecting with nature is one of her favourite things about being alive on this planet, and the way that she feels most at home here.