Ethnochoreological work of Olivera Mladenovic

Thanks to the zeal of the pioneers of the ethnochoreology in Serbia, Ljubica and Danica Janković, 2014 marks the eighty years since publishing of their first of totally eight books of the edition Narodne igre (Janković 1934), which is taken as the beginning of the development of ethnochoreology as an independent academic and scholarly discipline in the country. However, thanks to the dedicated work of their followers led by Olivera Mladenović, ethnochoreology had a continuity in the following decades. Considering the fact that she was born in 1914, the celebration of the centenary of her birth can be joined to the great jubilee of discipline itself. Because of her deep scientific thinking and extraordinary diligent and hard work, Olivera Mladenovic is truly a remarkable scholar of her era. Although restrained and with great respect for the work of her predecessors and contemporaries, Olivera Mladenović constantly reviewed and insightfully reflected on terminological, conceptual and methodological ethnochoreological solutions. Through opening the historical discourse in the study, as wel as exploring contemporary dance forms, she stepped out from the romantic folklore national orientation of the discipline and paved the way, more precisely, anticipated future development of the ethnochoreological scholarly thought in Serbia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177024: Muzička i igračka tradicija multietničke i multikulturalne Srbije