You've heard it before, haven't you? Even on this continent, where borders have been torn down. Torn down so that we can live, work, love, and create between distant points on the map that we call home. Homes where cultures mix, blend and collide, and that's not so scary, is it? It can be funny, challenging, even charming. This is AnOther, the comeback performance by Katherina Radeva, with a world premiere in Plovdiv commissioned and co-produced by One Dance Festival.

AnOther is a duet exploring how the present relates to the nation’s past. The performance is a personal and symbolic journey in which our sense of home is shaped by our distance from it. Katherina combines Bulgarian folk dance and music with her contemporary aesthetics, sense of humor, characteristic movements, and visual richness. AnOther is her emotional resonance with life abroad and celebrates the complex identity of migration, in which we simultaneously do not belong to our homeland, but cannot tear its roots from our hearts.

Because what does it mean to leave? What is left behind? Family and friends, language. The essence and peculiarities of life in a place as rich in traditions as Bulgaria. Shared knowledge about places and the past, about how to make salad or cook beans. Memories of the rhythm of the seasons. How do you change yourself to fit in, and how much do you wish to remain yourself? How do you make yourself a sense of home, something to keep away the endless nights of homesickness? 

Does it help to hear a song? To dance to it? To dance a dance which generations have danced before you? And what does it mean to return? To return after so long?

AnOther is a performance of duality - of contemporary and of folk, of the here and the now woven together with the past and ritual. A performance of visible and invisible belonging. A performance of all the journeys, only to take yourself home.

Aged 16, Katherina left Bulgaria alone for a college diploma in England. She didn’t mean to leave forever, but she’s never lived here since. Instead, she has been a migrant: living always in places she is not from, among people whose culture is not her culture, whose language is not her language. This status has been central to her work as an artist, which revolves around identity and multiplicity.

A respected and award winning performance maker, her work has been seen in the USA, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Azerbaijan -- but never in her homeland. Now, after 25 years of life abroad, Katherina Radeva returns to her birth place, the city of Plovdiv, with a show exploring migrancy, belonging and cultural heritage.

“Radeva delivers a gloriously uncomplicated and deeply felt performance that is a delight to watch.” - The Guardian

"Radeva's ability to expose her body, vulnerabilities, joys and sadnesses without a blink of fear are remarkable." - Dance Art Journal

"A welcome invitation to celebrate the entire messy experience of being a human." - The Quintessential Review

Two Destination Language is the collaborative practice of Katherina Radeva and Alister Lownie - multi award winning interdisciplinary artists traversing dance, performance, theatre, live art and the visual arts. Their projects are bold and ambitious centraling identity and community, difference and joy. 

They employ innovative artistic forms to cross cultural, social, economic and geographic barriers. Rooted in dialogue, they believe in the transformative power of art to change how we see ourselves and the society we share. Their work brings people together in new, unexpected ways, creating shared spaces for reflection and mutual understanding.

At Tanzmesse 2024, the world's largest contemporary dance professional forum, they were selected to participate in the artistic program. Katerina presented her critically acclaimed solo dance piece 40/40 - a celebration of female joy, dancing, migrancy, hardship and combating body shaming in a 50 min work that packs a punch which has toured extensively across the UK.  

As The Guardian wrote: "This is an undemanding 50 minutes thanks to the ease and directness of its communication, the pleasure of being in Radeva’s company. Studies have shown that when we watch dance, some of the same neurons fire in our brains that would if we were actually dancing but, crucially, only if the movements are ones we think we could do ourselves. So unless you’re a ballerina, those neurons aren’t firing at Swan Lake, but watching Radeva get lost in a beatific beat, they surely are".

AnOther is commissioned by One Dance Festival, in co-production with Toplocentrala, and Two Destination Language, with support from Tramway Supports, Glasgow, Dance Base - Edinburgh. The event is organized with the financial support of the National Culture Fund.