Bio
Nina Milanovski is a producer and contemporary dance artist based in Toronto. A graduate of the York University Dance program, Nina specialized in choreography and performance and was a member of the York Dance Ensemble for two seasons where she collaborated with artists such as Carol Anderson, Tracey Norman, and Susan Lee. In 2019, she had the honour of returning to the York Dance Ensemble as a choreographer to create "theta waves", an intense and athletic work exploring the dynamism of dreams. Intrigued by introspection through creating solo work and combining speech and dance, Nina created "Help Me To Help You To Like Me - A Working Title™" through the Artist in Residence program with Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisboa, Portugal.As part of the DanceWorks CoWorks 2021 season, Nina produced, “How did we get here?” a twelve part interactive dance film series that was inspired by “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. Most recently, as the 2021 Artist in Residence for Good Women Collective, Nina developed "uncoupling" , a duet that explores the unraveling of a romantic relationship between two women by exploring the passage of time and foreshadowing. uncoupling will premiere in 2024 as part of Dance Weekend’24 (Toronto) and Skirtsafire (Edmonton) festivals. Looking forward, Nina is excited to develop her solo, “Good Girl”, which investigates the intersections of sexism, homophobia and obedience.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice as a choreographer is largely built around creating works that are accessible to broad audiences and by extension building a community around dance. My works are inspired by the big emotions we feel as humans, such as love and grief and the identities we carry with us. By tapping into intense human emotions, I aim to create works that are accessible to audiences who are unfamiliar with dance. By using common experiences like falling in love or grieving a loss, audiences can relate to what is happening on stage even if they have never attended a dance show before. The works I create are athletic, quirky and off-beat, using the emotional depth and vulnerability of the dancers. My works strive to bring approachability to contemporary dance by creating a bond between dancers and the audience based on kinesthetic empathy. I use improvisational tasks and writing to develop a movement vocabulary that is unique to each work. Through repetition and variation of this movement vocabulary I facilitate a sense of familiarity for audiences. By creating a vocabulary for each work, I assign symbolism to specific movements. For example in my work “uncoupling”, the dancers often share tender moments where they lay down with their foreheads touching. In my mind, this serves as a stand in for intimacy and conveys to the audience that the performers are sharing an affectionate moment. Lately, I have been interested in intersecting virtuosic movement and pedestrian gestures to demonstrate the dichotomy between the inner landscape that strong emotions bring and how that gets diluted down to the outward composure we perform in everyday life.