ARTISTS OF DANCEUA ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

Daria Koval (UA)

Daria Koval is a Ukrainian contemporary dance artist and choreographer whose career began with professional sports and urban dance styles. Over time, she shifted her focus to contemporary dance, exploring movement as a way to process resilience and transformation.

A significant source of inspiration for her is Ukrainian culture and folk dance. She integrates its expressive hand positions, symbolic gestures, and collective energy into contemporary choreography, creating a dialogue between tradition and modernity.

Since 2022, Daria has viewed art as an act of honesty. For her, every work created after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine carries a political dimension, addressing themes of resistance, strength, and resilience. Her performances not only reflect personal experience but also echo the collective struggles of Ukrainian people.

Central to her choreographic practice is her original Safe Space method, developed from body-oriented therapy, meditation principles and trauma research. This approach allows her to integrate personal and collective memory, while offering performers and audiences a space for grounding and healing.

All Clear by Daria Koval

The graduation ceremony – once a joyful sleepless night with dancing and greeting the sunrise – is reshaped by war: shortened by curfew, interrupted by air raid sirens, and sometimes continued in shelters.

Based on documentary interviews with graduates who finished school during the war, the piece reflects the challenge of navigating personal growth while remaining anchored to deeply rooted cultural traditions. Their search for fleeting moments of peace, and the effort to preserve celebration and cultural traditions despite constant uncertainty and loss.

Through this work, we aim to explore how dance can process collective and individual trauma while preserving cultural identity and fostering resilience.

Credits:
Performance & co-creation: Anna Sofia Borodkina
Choreography: Daria Koval
Videography: Dimitriy Zakharov
Sound design. Ivan Martynenko

Catch Kollektíva (HU)

Catch Kollektíva is a creative duo formed by Anita Czakó and Csenge Csutak in 2023 with the aim of working together in a playful, equal manner. We seek to explore the boundaries between dance and performance art, and the balance between the performers and the viewers’ enjoyment. Our main language is dance and movement through which we reach into other branches of the performing arts.

VICSOR by Catch Kollektíva

VICSOR is a punk song, a cry, a shout, a collage, a curiosity and a beginning. A place where two women can escape from the hardships of their daily lives. A world where they can investigate different identities, roles and characters that live inside of them. A safe space for them to feel their emotions, be happy, sad, excited or angry, where they can be vulnerable. A place where they can share, rely and support each other. A world fueled by stupid ideas, desire and feminine power. More doing less thinking.

VICSOR is an invitation for others to experience that world in their own way, an invitation to watch us go crazy. VICSOR is a permission to fall apart.

This project has been supported by:
The Danish National School of Performing Arts
SÍN Arts Center

Katja Butković & Maria Mora (HR)

Maria Mora is a Valencian maker and performer. She graduated in contemporary dance from the Professional Dance Conservatory of Valencia in 2020 and in Dance Arts in Context from Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg (NL) in 2025, where she interned with Katja Heitmann’s company in her final year, touring Europe with them. Between these studies, she joined Oficina Zero, a one- year intensive program in Porto (PT). She has trained with renowned artists including Lali Ayguadé and participated in projects by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Jonas Vandekerckhove, and Cecilia Moisio, among others. Maria also creates, performs, and teaches her own work. Based in the
Netherlands, she develops personal projects and collaborates internationally with Cia. L’abocador, Katja Heitmann, and Katja Butković.

Katja Butković is a Croatian performer and maker. She graduated in Dance Arts in Context at Fontys Academy of the Arts, Tilburg (NL) in 2025, where she has had the opportunity to intern with Sidi Larbi Cherkaou/Eastman Dance Company and Dutch National Opera & Ballet. Additionally, she has worked as an assistant choreographer and stage director to Andrea Beugger. As part of her studies, she spent 2023 in Area, Professional Training Program in Creation and Contemporary Dance in Barcelona (ES). Over the past few years, she has engaged in creative processes with choreographers such as Maximiliano Sanford, Clémentine Telesfort, Diego Sinniger, Katja Heitmann and Andrea Gavriliu, as well as in repertoire work with Danielle Huyghe, Ann Van den Broek, and Cecilia Moisio. She has been deeply invested in creative exploration, presenting her own work in the theatres across the Netherlands, including at Seasoning Summer with United Cowboys and Tilburg in Motion. Currently she is based in The Netherlands and continues to work on her solo ‘That’s how we live on the water and by the sea’ and collaborates with Maria Mora.

On display by Katja Butković & Maria Mora

‘On display’ portray different contexts in which dancers body is being present. By asking questions such as Do you do…? Are you..? Can you…? How to and not to? Opens up a game between expectations and the lived realities. Approaching the research combining the literal with the abstract we want to bring these moments closer to the audience, to reflect on how dancers are framed, approached, and consumed.