Under a few slogans, 18th Belgrade Dance Festival is ahead of us. Inviting us to enjoy live performances and the magic of the theater, its main program is brave, insanely interesting and boldly mature… It starts on March 20th with Dimitris Papaioannou’s new piece and ends on April 14th with Akram Khan Company’s performance. However, this is not all, because there are also programs from the previous edition that could not reach the audience in Belgrade and Novi Sad due to the pandemic. For those who kept their tickets, the Festival owes some sensational shows, so the real marathon of guest performances of exceptional choreographers and companies will last from March 6th until September 26th! The Festival is preceded by the traditional film review Dance Days in Cinematheque (February, 18-21), workshops, masterclasses, exhibitions…
DIPLOMACY & COMMERCE’S CHOICE: 8 CHOREOGRAPHIC WORKS TO MARK THE WORLD’S THEATER SEASON:
March 20th, 20h|Serbian National Theater, Dimitris Papaioannou, Athens
Painter and choreographer, theater and visual artist, Dimitris Papaioannou is bringing his newest production to the Belgrade Dance Festival. Even during the creative process, the piece “Transverse orientation” was bought by the biggest festivals and theaters. However, the pandemic wanted the world tour to start almost a year late, in March 2021, and for Paris and Novi Sad to be at the top of the list of cities where the audience will be the first to discover a new work of the famous Greek artist.
March 25th, 20h|Opera Madlenianum, Zappala Danza, Catania
An authentic piece dedicated to Saint Agatha, the patron Saint of Catania. Adopting an iconographic aesthetic, but not giving up on his extremely brave and modern language, choreographer Roberto Zappalà tackles current topics such as violence against women, religious and economic fundamentalism. Sicily is depicted in between fascination, mysticism and harsh reality. The Saint, whose devotional image bordering eroticism and sadism is universally known in the catholic world, is a starting point for the piece.
April, 5th, 20h|Yugoslav Drama Theater, TanzMainz, Mainz
Even though Sharon Eyal says “Soul Chain” is a piece about love and longing, you should not expect too much romance. Rather, the movements are animalistic and pure, a steaming group that moves with the highest discipline in rhythmic unison. The longer a unison lasts, the more time we have to search for the differences between the dancers and find their true intentions. One can see from the same thing how different we are. So here, in the contrast between the group and the individual, Eyal expresses her love for the absolute uniqueness of each individual. Although it will be TanzMainz’s first time performing in Belgrade, the festival’s audience is well acquainted with Sharon Eyal’s opus.
April, 8th, 20h|Theater Atelje 212, Compagnie Maguy Marin, Sainte-Foy-Les-Lyon
The great lady of the French contemporary dance, Maguy Marin, created the “Ligne de Crête”, researching Spinoza’s philosophy and the philosophy of Marx. However, her intention was to approach this topic from a more fun angle, like mad rock climbers who, thanks to their endurance, radically change their positions and strategies, After all, that is the only possibility to conquer an unattainable summit.
April, 9th & 10th, 20h|Opera Madlenianum, Peeping Tom, Brussels
In the diptych: “The missing door” and “The Lost Room”, several characters are evolving in spaces from which they cannot escape. Wandering through a macabre labyrinth, they seek an ideal, they bring a dream and hope. The characters live between reality and what’s imagined, guided by natural forces that lead them to an uncertain destiny. Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier create a disturbing, dark and enclosed world – typical in the work of Peeping Tom, while at the same time putting a unique and extreme language of movement and performance at the center of the pieces. The performance reminds on live montage of superb horror.
April, 14th, 20h|Serbian National Theater, Akram Khan Company, London
“Outwitting the Devil” is a piece inspired by fragments of the 12 broken clay tablets which together make up one of the world’s oldest great works of literature, the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Akram Khan’s new work embodies a violent chapter in young Gilgamesh’s life, read and recalled by his older, dying self.
