Labour of Love presents insights from gardening practice undertaken between 2019-23 at Chiswick House and Gardens, the birthplace of the English Landscape Movement.
Labour of Love is set to challenge how gardens can be experienced and urges us to rethink historic landscapes as ‘meeting places of nature and human labour’ (Mukerji).
The opening event at 30 Millbank, part of the landmark Millbank Tower that has been home to many high-profile political organisations, invited the audience to turn this historic site, currently a declining office space and future luxury hotel, into a historic garden. The images are documentation of this event.
Concept and direction: Mil Vukovic-Smart
Video editing: Andy Smart
Sound: Julian Zinovieff
Dramaturgy: Heidi Rustgaard
Design: Adrienne Bennie
Performance (opening event): Hamish MacPherson, Danai Pappa, Oscar Reynolds, Olga Tomalik, George Williams Lane
Technical support: Tam Paul-Worika
With special thanks to the gardening team and garden volunteers at Chiswick House & Gardens whose generosity, patience, friendship and practical support made this project possible.
25-28 October 2023, Millbank Tower, London
A dance reading act by Mil Vukovic-Smart, choreographed and performed in collaboration with Hanna Wroblewski and Juliette Mello. A collage of intimate longings and social concerns, based on letters from youths in Western Europe to a teenage girl in former Yugoslavia during summer holidays in the 1980s, offers a view of Yugoslav past as promised-future.
First performed at Southeast European Future Festival presented by CONTEMPORARY BALKAN ART (COBA), on 14 September 2019, 7pm, at Rich Mix, London.
A duet deconstructing the oldest European form of couple dancing – the waltz. Developed in response to a sound recorded outside Westminster Palace on the evening of MPs’ first vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal on 15 January 2019.
Concept, direction, choreography and performance: Mil Vukovic-Smart
Co-choreographed and performed with: Luigi Ambrosio
Dramaturgy: Paul Hughes
Sound Design: JulZin
Production: Mil Smart Dance © 2019
First performed: Making an Exit, Chisenhale Dance Space, 29 March 2019
Photos: Andy Smart
A reading act that brings into dialogue Agrippina Vaganova’s writings about ballet technique and Andre Lepecki’s analysis of recent choreographic practices. Giselitis, offers a way of re-engaging with dance history and the classical canon from a standpoint of mental distress and forgetfulness.
Choreography and performance:
Mil Vukovic-Smart and Carlos Maria Romero Atabey
Music: extracts from Giselle by Adolphe Adam/arr. JulZin
Dramaturgy: Paul Hughes
First performed: Dance in the Age of Forgetfulness Conference, Society for Dance Research, 19 April 2018
Inspired by the Mad Scene from the ballet Giselle and reimagined as a group piece in a surreal mix of ballet, contemporary dance and everyday gestures exploring lies, loss and betrayal.
Direction and choreography: Mil Vukovic-Smart
Developed and performed by:
Luigi Ambrosio
Terri Biard
Kashish Gaba
Mil Vukovic-Smart
Dramaturgy: Paul Hughes
Sound Design: JulZin
Premiered: 15 February 2018, Resolution 2018, The Place
With special thanks to Rambert Archives for the use of the interview with Beryl Goldwyn by Claire Izzard (2016) as part of the Rambert Voices, an oral history project marking the Rambert company’s 90th anniversary, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and licenced by Rambert under Creative Commons Licence 4.0.
Photos: Donna Ford @donnafordography
A house with its grounds as a choreographic object, a haven of woodland quiet in an urban setting.
“It is our positioning within space, both as the point of perspectival access to space, and also as an object for others in space, that gives the subject a coherent identity and an ability to manipulate things, including its own body parts, in space.” Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies
Concept, choreography and direction: Mil Vukovic-Smart
In collaboration with performers: Luigi Ambrosio, Antonio de la Fe, Adriana Peixoto, Ana Stojanovic, Mil Vukovic-Smart, Robert Williamson
Performance assistance: Andy Smart and Paul Hughes
Sound design: JulZin
Premiered: 7 June 2016, Grove House, Froebel College, Roehampton University
Photos: Christine Donnier-Valentin
Open Performance, Movement Research, New York
19 April 2016
Concept, text, direction, performance: Mil Vukovic-Smart
Choreographed & performed with Andy Smart
Performed at Cue Positions: A Symposium by BELLYFLOP, looking at how artists might take a stand, speak from a position, share an opinion.
22 November 2013, Artsadmin's Toynbee Studios.
"Having a lovely time. Weather OK. Will have heaps to tell you when I come home. Lots of Love. A."
Inspired by Alex Katz’s painting 'Eleuthera' (1984) and seaside holiday postcards, an exploration of developing a dance from a surface, without any story behind.
Choreography: Mil Vukovic-Smart
Performed by: Mai Tassinari, Mil Vukovic-Smart, Monica Brunello, Philippa Newis, Rachael Hopkins
Premiered: Kingsway College Theatre, London, March 2013
Photos: Gosia Wilda
“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overheard was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June." Virginia Wolf, Mrs Dalloway
Choreographed and performed by Mil Vukovic-Smart & Joyce Kidd.
London Contemporary Dance School, The Place, 2012
Photos: Alicia Clarke
