Who are we
Moving Body Festival began in 2016 in Varna, Bulgaria as a response to a noticeable absence: a lack of space for contemporary movement-based practices, for open-ended artistic dialogue, and for works that challenge the limits of how the body is represented and understood. What started as a modest initiative has since grown into a consistent annual platform that offers a space for artists and audiences to engage with dance, performance, and moving image not as separate disciplines, but as overlapping fields of inquiry.
The festival’s programming has always centered on the body—not just as form or technique, but as a site of experience, dialogue, memory, empowerment, and possibility. Each edition is carefully curated around main conceptual questions that drive us and responds to the urgencies of the moment—whether personal, political, or environmental. < What moves us? How do we move? Where we are moving to? How we move from individual towards collective body? How we move in time of catastrophe? >
The program has featured live performances, dance films, video art, installations, process-based labs, public space interventions, and discussions that stretch across aesthetic registers—from the minimal and intimate to the charged and confrontational.
Over the years, the festival has shifted and expanded its structure. Screenings of dance films and hybrid visual works have become a key axis of the program, highlighting how choreography can happen beyond the stage, in editing timelines, in architecture, and in everyday movement. Alongside these, live works continue to hold space for the immediacy of performance and the shared presence between performer and viewer. Workshops, residencies, and artist talks have deepened the festival’s engagement with process, allowing not only finished works but also ways of working to become visible and valued.
Based in Varna—a city without a dedicated venue for contemporary art and dance—the festival creates temporary spaces where new kinds of artistic visibility and engagement become possible. It brings together local artists, international voices, and diverse audiences in a shared environment of openness and inquiry. Through partnerships, peer exchange, and consistent presence, the festival has helped cultivate a context where none existed, contributing to the slow and necessary work of building a more connected and thoughtful cultural field in the region.
Mission
Moving Body Festival supports and presents work in dance, performance, and film that places the body at the center of artistic and social questioning. In a cultural environment with few spaces for independent and contemporary practices, especially in Bulgaria’s coastal region, we are committed to creating continuity, visibility, and connection. Our mission is to hold space for artists and publics to meet across boundaries of discipline, geography, and perspective—fostering exchange, care, and critical attention.
Vision
We imagine a cultural landscape in Bulgaria where contemporary movement-based art is understood as a vital part of public discourse and artistic life. Moving Body Festival aspires to be a steady platform for experimentation, reflection, and conversation—a place where the body becomes a way of thinking through the present, and imagining what comes next.
Founders
Iskra Prodanova
Svetlozara Hristova
Team
Mariya-Magdalena Arnaudova - management and co-ordination
Stefka Dimitrova - management and co-ordination
Stoycho Cahakarov - graphic designer
Violina Zhelyazkova - PR and communication
Gergana Encheva - photographer
Artin Vision - video
Julia Radanova - lawyer
Iskra Prodanova
Iskra Prodanova (b. 1988, Varna, Bulgaria) is a choreographer-pedagogue by education and a multidisciplinary artist and researcher by vocation with 15 years of experience in contemporary (performing) art. She is the co-founder, curator, and artistic director of the Moving Body platform (est. 2016, Varna).
Her latest research revolves around the notion of (inner) UTOPIA as a form of resistance and resilience, trough the lens of transformative possibility rooted in the present, she is exploring the intersections of art, culture, identity, memory, inner freedom, colonial legacies and decolonisation, (re)researching for pathways to collective healing and justice. Her practice focuses on the liminal in order to understand what is happening in the space of “in-betweenness”, through the practice of slowing down, be-coming, inviting, and allowing different ways of being, focusing on (un)learning, and listening.
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, BUNA festival, International festival for contemporary dance and performance Antisttaic, and many others.
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, and Slavs and Tatars 2025.
In 2016, Iskra, together with Svetlozara Hristova, initiated the Moving Body platform.
Svetlozara Hristova
Svetlozara Hristova (b. 1987, Varna, Bulgaria) graduated Cultural Studies at Sofia University Kliment Ohridski with a diploma thesis on Theater of the Spiritual Archetype – Sfumato Theater. During her studies she specialized in Acting at the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts Krastyo Sarafov. Svetlozara has over ten years of experience as a cultural manager in various artistic initiatives; and her name is mainly associated with two festival platforms in her hometown, Varna – RADAR Festival Beyond Music (since 2014) and Moving Body Festival (since 2016). Svetlozara has lasting interests and curiosities in the field of contemporary performing arts, site-specific art, photography and literature. She has participated as a co-imaginator and dramaturg in some contemporary dance and theater performances. Svetlozara also writes regularly for specialized media, including the online platform New Dramaturgies (2017/2018), Dance Magazine (2019/2020) and the Translation on Air (2021/2022) section. She is also a co-founder of Book Journey (since 2021) – a platform for booklovers of contemporary literature. Svetlozara is also a guest lecturer in various civic initiatives, including TEDxTalayana (2019, Varna), The Changemakers (2018, Stara Zagora and Plovdiv), DA LAB laboratory for presenting new and experimental projects (2017, Sofia), Forum for innovations and culture of sharing (2016, Veliko Tarnovo), Forum Klyuch (2015, Varna) and others. Svetlozara has been invited to be a member of various jury commissions, including this prestigious ICAR award for the category of Contemporary Dance and Performance, the International Portrait Film Festival, among others.
Contact us
PR and communication - Violina Zhelyazkova
moving.body.festival@gmail.com
violina@hype.bg
Artistic Director - Iskra Prodanova
performance.room.varna@gmail.com
You can also contact us on the following adres:
str. “ГGeorgi Bakalov” 17, ent. 5, fl. 5, ap. 69
9010 Varna, Bulgaria