Milka Djordjevich, Bob

Bob is a manic whirlwind of methodical rapid-fire movements, dictated, performed and self-enforced by Milka Djordjevich. Set to throbbing music composed by Djordjevich, Bob eroticizes the labor of the dancing body–the repetition, the discipline, and the fallout. A mid-career taxonomy of sorts, Djordjevich confronts demands to optimize her female body and the market’s expectation to enhance her performance over time. Bob is an alter ego trained to be so skilled as to become other–the perfect kinetic subject in the service of her audience. Algorithmic movement patterns conjure approaches from trance, folk ritual and rite–they become a means to no end. A reflection rivaling the self, Bob is on a rampage with and against self-consciousness in order to bask in reverie, delusion, desire and rage. Show no mercy!

Bob premiered on July 11 &12, 2024 at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina.

Choreography, Performance, and Music: Milka Djordjevich
Lighting Design: Madeline Best
Design Advisor: Shannon Scrofano

Bob is commissioned by ADF with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works. The development of Bob was made possible in part by MOCA Los Angeles and is produced by STANA, who is supported by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan.

Milka Djordjevich is a Serbian-American choreographer, performer and educator whose work blurs the distinction between ‘dance’ and ‘non-dance’ through expanded notions of choreography that operate inside and outside of established dance traditions. Her work questions notions of ‘neutrality’ through the perception of gender and identity within the often-presumed ‘neutral’ spaces of theaters, galleries, museums and public contexts.

Her work has been shown at many venues across the country, including the BAMPFA, the Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, the Hammer Museum, the Kitchen, Machine Project, MAK Center, The Momentary, New York Live Arts, PICA’s TBA Festival, The Philadelphia Thing, REDCAT, Santa Ana Sites and the Whitney Museum, and internationally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Djordjevich was a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award recipient, a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow, a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2024 Loghaven Residency Awardee and a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar.

Djordjevich’s work also straddles theatrical, visual art, music, fashion and commercial contexts where she has choreographed and movement directed projects such as: Star Choir an opera by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, produced by the Industry; pop duo Aly & AJ’s Listen! music video featured in Rolling Stone; Ephemeral Study No. 1, a performance and film created with fashion designer Samuel Gui Yang; the performance and film Time Lapsus, created in collaboration with visual artist Marcos Luytens; Sylvan Oswald’s Vendetta Chrome, directed by Sarah Lyons; and Jesse Bonnell’s Paradise Island, a theater work based on texts written by Richard Foreman. Furthermore, she has performed and collaborated with Chris Peck, Dragana Bulut, Simone Forti, Victoria Fu, Matt Rich, Heather Kravas, Jennifer Monson, Sasa Asentic, Sam Kim, among others.

She is currently on faculty at UCLA and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) and has taught at Bennington College, CalArts, Wesleyan University, Pomona College, Pasadena City College, and University of California at Irvine and Riverside, among others. In 2016, she established STANA, an organization cultivating local, national and international dance connections. www.thisismilka.com.

Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator, and is produced by Amelia Charter, Producer of Performance and Programs with Michele Huizar, Performance Coordinator, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Wonmi's WAREHOUSE Programs is founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.

Performances at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Performance with generous funding provided by Betsy Greenberg and The Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund.