Zjana
About
Dance Artist · Somatic Researcher · Digital Choreographer
I'm a performance maker working across dance, digital art, and installation.
My practice draws on somatic approaches to create embodied encounters with digital systems, foregrounding care, presence, and collective experience.
I work collaboratively with performers, technologists, and producing partners, and value processes that are ethically grounded, accessible, and responsive to context.
Fusing classical dance, somatics, and emerging technologies to animate hidden stories and bodies-in-resistance. Performances often uncover hidden, marginalised narratives. Drawing on AI, biofeedback, and immersive media, my work interrogates how bodies sense, remember, and interconnect within contemporary and technological landscapes. Emerging from in-betweenness, I build spaces that blur borders, crafting a platform where multiplicity isn’t a gap to be filled, but a space to fall and stand into.
Presence
Performing and presenting work at:
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Dixon Place, NYC
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Malta Society of Arts
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REDCAT, Los Angeles
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Mercat de les Flors (Grec Festival), Barcelona
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Oulu Museum of Art, Finland
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Hong Kong Culture Centre, Hong Kong
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Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv-Yāfā
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Turner Contemporary, Roundhouse, The Place in the UK
and more
Collaborations
Performed with Hartford Ballet, Joffrey Ballet Ensemble, Vertigo Dance Company, Kiani Del Valle (KVD Performance Group), as well as commercial credits dancing alongside Shaggy, Chaka Khan, Jamelia, Sonic Youth, and working with iconic interactive media artist Scott Snibbe and film director Harmony Korine.
Board Experince
As an activist-artist, I have worked closely with community-led movement organisations such as Chisenhale Dance Space, contributing to initiatives that centre bodily autonomy, collective action, and the role of dance within contemporary protest cultures. My work frequently engages with public and politically charged environments, exploring movement as resistance, resilience, and shared agency.
As an editorial assistant, I'm part of the team working on the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practice in the UK.
An assemblage of elements
Artistic Statement
I love physics and books, solving mysteries, and keeping secrets. I sometimes work alone and sometimes collectively with others, in dialogue with humans and non-humans. Somewhere in between dreaming up ideas and experimenting in the studio, on stages or in galleries, I bring what I can to touch those with me in the past, present, and future and see what might emerge in the space between us. I make dance and performances for live concerts, Virtual (VR) and Augmented (AR) Reality. Welcome to my creative space! As an artist, performer, and writer, I blend social experiments, live performance, and digital media to create research-led, multimedia and immersive performances. My work often plays with audience expectations using humour to convey political concerns. Join the list to stay updated on my projects, workshops, and performances and discover other artists I admire.