Iskra Prodanova (1988) is a choreographer, performer, facilitator of dance, movement, somatic and embodiment practices, as well as co-founder, curator and artistic director of the Moving Body platform. She works and creates mainly in the field of contemporary dance and performance art, but she also experiments with visual and sound art. She maps various routes along which to move, and territories in which to stand.
Iskra graduated as a choreographer-pedagogue from Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar" in 2011, after which she developed her career thanks to a number of workshops, intensive programs, causalities, events and encounters with numerous artists. Some of them include Diego Agullo (Body and Event; Dangerous dance); Doris Uhlich (More than naked); Philippe Saire; David Zambrano; Nigel Charnock (DV8); Leslie Baker (Six Viewpoints); Adi Weinberg (GAGA movement); Iztok Kovac (En Knap); Christian Bakalov.
Iskra was part of Derida Dance Center's residency programme in 2013 where she explored the topic of ‘copy and the original’ through an audio-visual performance together with the visual artist Neno Belchev and the sound artist Angel Simitchiev. She has also been part of similar opportunities at Radar Festival Beyond Music in 2017 and Radar Sofia 2021.
Over the years she has been creating solo stage works, video works and has participated in group artistic projects, exhibitions and performances in various contexts and festivals. Among them: VIDEOHOLICA International Festival for Video Art; DA fest - International Festival for Digital Art; RADAR- Festival Beyond Music; ACT Independent Theatre Festival; VERTIGO Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance; Process Space Art Festival; WATER Festival for Contemporary Art; ATOM Choreographic Series; CAMP Festival for Visual Music; HOT ROOM / sharing practices and POETIC BODIES / research program in the context of ICC, and many others.
In 2016, Iskra, together with Svetlozara Hristova, initiate the Moving Body platform.
In recent years Iskra has been busy with solo and collective participatory and choreographic stage works, with her own artistic works and with dancing for other choreographers and artists.
She shares: “I’ve always been fascinated by liminal spaces, by what happens in-between. In-between cultures, people, systems and spaces. Because that’s often where the most creative ideas come from. It’s why I first gravitated to the liminal concept — for it describes the magic of the in-between — a transitional space in flux, and full of possibility.”
Her artistic pursuits surround the questions: Where we are moving to? What drives us to move? How do we move from an individual towards a collective body? How do we move in time of Catastrophe?
These questions are implemented in the way she makes her works and in the way she moves the Moving Body platform, together with her creative partner and cultural manager Svetlozara Hristova, under the motto The Way We Move Matters (TWWMM).
Thank you!