Staying true to performances set in outside of the box places, ANTHEM will be viewed by the audience from all four sides in a downtown Santa Ana loft. Staying inside the box are the performers, ANTHEM’s four dancers mirror a square shape with their movement.

Milka Djordjevich’s contemporary dance style bends away from the commonplace of neutrality and towards intimacy and immediacy. ANTHEM is a work of existing and imagined dance styles to explore labor, play, and feminine-posturing. Distinct movements dissolve into a tangle of commotion, the steps blur the mundane and glamourous.

“Form generates power: power to rise above, power to hold ground. ANTHEM, a dance for four women by Milka Djordjevich, builds upon units of social and folk-dance moves via a rubix cube-like spatial logic. Layers of repeated forms shift the bodies up gear. There is a new groove made here-a groove made by commitment and giving no-fucks, a groove for women to ride rough, to represent, to feel themselves.” – riting.org

ANTHEM will be performed by Laurel Atwell, Jessica Cook, Dorthy Dubrule, and devika wickrememsinghe. The four dance with confidence, complimenting each other and enjoying play. Hand-clap games, backstroking arms, and slashing kicks are part of the pronounced syllables from composer Chris Peck. Of note, Naomi Luppescu, the costume designer and Madeline Best, lighting designer, created the rich palette of color the dancers weave through.