Dance Day: The City as a Body – The New World | Naujininkai

This year’s celebration of Dance Day takes us to Naujininkai—a neighborhood where different eras of the city, culture, and rhythms of life intersect. Historical paths, traces of industry, community histories, and contemporary changes create a multi-layered urban landscape, and throughout the month of April, the bodies of dancers from the “Low Air” dance school and theater serve as instruments of inquiry, allowing us to explore these spaces. Through movement, we will explore this “relationscape,” where the body reads the city, remembers what the city has forgotten, and creates what does not yet exist.

Certain locations in Naujininkai and their vitality since the beginning of spring inspire a deeper exploration: the chapel pole with a sculpture of St. Nepomuk, which once stood by the old Rodūnia Road, marked the city’s boundary, and from these hills the panorama of Vilnius first opened up. Workshops, factories, and workers’ quarters sprang up along the railroad; the western part of the district was called “chimneys”, and the eastern part—”the New World”. In the 20th century, Naujininkai became an important residential area for workers and railway employees; during the Soviet era, it grew into a dense neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings. Military units have been stationed here since ancient times, and today the district retains its strategic importance—a NATO integration unit is based there. It is precisely these layers of the city and moments in its history that have inspired creative research and movement experiments in Naujininkai, and this month’s explorations are just beginning.