Korzo theater

Dunja Jocic was born Belgrade in 1978 and grew up in a family of filmmakers. She was a vice champion in rhythmic gymnastics and was on the Yugoslav Olympic team. Graduating Ballet School Lujo Davico in 1998 and continued her studies at the Rotterdam Dance Academy. She has resided in The Netherlands since. Graduated in Rotterdam in 2002, she has danced with distinguished directors and dance companies such as Club Guy and Roni or Emio Greco /PC in Netherlands, as well as Ballet du Nord in France. For her performance in “Midnight Rising“ by Club Guy and Roni, Jocic was nominated for a Golden Swan in 2013. Parallel to her dance career she started her collaboration with theatre director Nikola Zavisic, as choreographer for various theatre productions in Novi Sad and Belgrade. In 2007, Dunja made her first work “No flowers, please”, for which she was awarded at the Festival of Choreographic Miniatures in Belgrade. The same festival commissioned her to create the full-length production “Not Me”, together with Grand Theatre in Groningen. In 2012, Dunja was commissioned to create “Sonnet 66 – Shakespeare” for Bitef Dance Company in Belgrade. In her choreographic work Jocic can also be seen on screen, like in her award-winning dance film debut “Mirroring” (2011) she wrote and co directed with her long-term collaborator film director Marinus Groothof. Mirroring won the Best Short Film at the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, best dance film at Jumping Frames Festival in Hong Kong, the second price at Ficbueu FF Spain, and Special Achievement Award at the Thessaloniki International Short Film Festival. In her, her second film “Bird”, Jocic propels her ability of the use of film language and exposes the viewer to her meticulous movements and choreography. Bird premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival 2015 and competed for a Golden Calf. The film has been screened at festivals like Filmforum at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Dance on Camera festival in New York and the Dead by Dawn festival in Edinburgh. The “Bird” was awarded the Cinedance Public Award in 2016 in Amsterdam. In 2015, Jocic has created “Don't talk to me in my sleep” loosely inspired by the relationship of Warhol and his Mother Julia, composed by Hugo Morales. The piece premiered at the Noordernzone Festival in Groningen and toured in the Netherlands and abroad. In 2017, Jocic choreographed "La Mode" a multimedia piece directed by the Japanese/Dutch artist and pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, featuring the ensemble of Spellbound Ballet from Rome. The piece that inaugurated Taiwan’s Taichung Metropolitan was composed by Yannis Kyriakides and designed by acclaimed Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Jocic has also had the pleasure of collaborating as a choreographer and director with the composer Klaas de Vries and the mezzoroprano Gerrie de Vries on the “Hundred night, Hundred years opera”, premiered at the Musica Sacra (2013) in Maastricht, conducted by Gregory Charette. In her last production for the Ca Dance festival in The Hague, in 2017, Jocic created a work for two dancers based on Nabokov's short story “Terra Incognita”. Dunja Jocic creates magnetizing performances exploring the back rooms of the human psyche. She confronts the bizarre with the gentile emotion, skillfully pulling abstraction into sharp, at times, humorous conclusions.  Her work has been presented in numerous important theaters, as well as at many well known festivals.