Bitef

in Belgrade, for an interview after one of the strenuous scenic repetitions before the first performance. You are the first choreographer from Croatia after Milko Sparenblek (20 years ago, hack in 1985 he choreographer and directed for the Belgrade ballet company „Cattali Carmina“ and „ Aphrodite’s Triumph“ both by Carl Orff) who, after 20 years works with the Belgrade ballet troupe again. How did this collaboration start? As a matter of fact, everything happened by chance. The roots 90 back during our guest performance in 2003 with our show Circus Primitif Ballet. After the first performance, the manager of the National Theatre Ljubivoje Tadić asked me what I am doing in the next season, and I responded jokingly „As far as I heard, something here at your house.“ Later we spoke about that officially in Ljubljana and I suggested that I do the first presentation of the ballet Who is singing there , which I should produce for the Belgrade Ballet. At that time I was extremely surprised and my first impression was that it is impossible to do a ballet show upon a motion picture which would be as perfect as the cult movie by Sijan, since it would be pointless to tell the exact what I thought would be impossible presented a challenge to try and give a corresponding action to a ballet show of this kind. Then I started to contemplate in another way: one should not do a show upon a movie, but exclusively inspired by the action of the movie and the quality of its personalities, in a way that it becomes an author’s work, and that’s where possibilities for my work have opened. A typical Serbian mentality from the region of Sumadija and the colors of the environment just at the beginning of World War II in Yugoslavia are very distant to you both in time as well as psychologically and in space. How did you cope with that? I decided to observe it in a much broader way. I wanted that the show in its final stage be recognizable even to those who never saw Sijan’s movie and that one still can comprehend the point of the relations. That one does, not have to search for the elements from the movie in order to understand the show and to be satisfied by it in every sense as a spectator. Since I have worked with dancers from here, they possess the mentality of their people, maybe a distant one, but still their roots are here, so I have relied on their natural I consider the story of the movie itself as archetypical. It can be put in any time, any space, in any place or context. I followed it as a story

about a group of people that travels but does not know what awaits them in the crucial moment of the world at the very end of their voyage. Such a story can happen always and to all nations. But, of course, here it is more specific considering the mentality of the participants. I tried to incorporate all of that so that the result becomes universal and that it can satisfy the audience from age of 7 to 77 - as the saying goes. That means that it can satisfy the minority of the audience, the intellectual one, both young and older ones, briefly all criteria of an audience. Is the musical score by the composer Vojislav Voki Kostić in harmony with such comprehension with such bittersweet, comical - sad universal story? I had a phenomenal cooperation with Voki Kostić, to say the least. Whafs most important we found ourselves immediately on the same wavelength. Despite generational differences between us, he has a fantastically young spirit, nearly a boyish spirit, In our telephone conversation I gave him rough information about how I wanted to name individual numbers and in what rhythm and sensibility I want them to be. He accepted chat in the same moment. That means that all torments we had in that collaboration were " sweet torments. " It was really a unique and wonderful collaboration. What influence had Sijan 's motion picture on your author's inspiration in doing the choreography of the ballet Who is singing there? In my stage production I was leaning but on a few characters, despite the fact that in the movie we have seven male and one female part. I have been concentrating myself more on them as a group of characters, so that out of this came also the marvelous music by Voki Kostic. (Interviewer Milica Zajcev) Photos: Srdan Mihić