Ballet Fest / The audience delighted by Grand Hotel with the special applause for the Ladies (Dancing Theatre Gospodje)
Contemporary dancing play Grand Hotel, performed as a part of the Ballet Fest, has delighted the audience in the National Theatre in Sarajevo.
The connoisseurs of the ballet and contemporary theatre know that we can expect the best from duo authors of the play Grand Hotel, just like it was this time. Choreographer Aleksandar Ilić and director Aleksandar Nikolić expressed all the complexity of their imagination, experience, and knowledge by conceiving an impressive, physically demanding, entertaining, and visually refined dancing theatre.
A strong author’s signature to this play is given by the music composed by Ana Krstajić, who is one of the most interesting composers in Serbia nowadays.
The authors team managed to conjure up the atmosphere of Wes Anderson‘s cult film The Grand Budapest Hotel that was only a starting point for the play concept. The play is immersed in eternal questions of inevitable time running and the place of an individual in a huge universe unlimited by time or space.
Ballet Fest picture – Mojca Majcen
The answers to philosophical questions are revealed to us by the protagonists’ sixty minutes of magical, witty, and virtuoso dancing. Four exraordinary soloists enchanted us with their energy, original expression, and their personalities. Among them is brilliant Mojca Majcen, a dancer from Slovenia, then Ognjen Vučinić with a strong personality who comes from Croatia, joyful Jakša Filipovac from Serbia, and extremely talented and charismatic Branko Mitrović from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
We should remember his name for judging by what he showed at the play Grand Hotel, it is clear that our country hasn’t got dancers of such potential currently. Branko Mitrović grew up in Bijeljina, but he went to Belgrade due to the lack of adequate dance lessons, and then further to the international master classes. Thanks to that, he takes part in the performances of many Belgrade theaters nowadays, and he is also one of the members of the Balkan Dance Project, which brings him to Sarajevo from time to time. Hopefully, we still stand the chance of watching him on our stages.
Ballet Fest picture – Branko Mitrović
With all due respect to these brilliant soloists, let’s say a few words about the ensemble Ladies (Gospodje in Serbian) which embodies the abstract notion of time in the Grand Hotel. As it was explained to the journalists on the press conference about the play, there is the custom according to which local retired or working dancing actresses are engaged for this role every time the play is performed.
Local ballerinas Zulejha Kečo and Dajana Zilić, and former ballerinas Aida Palinić, Nikolina Petković and Nataša Hajdarević had the honor of playing the role of ‘time’ at the Sarajevo performance. Although they had only one rehearsal, they approached this task very professionally and made an unforgettable performance which was rewarded by the audience with great applause.
Ballet Fest picture – Ladies Ensemble (Gospodje Ensemble)
The play was produced by the theatre Madlenianum from Zemun, the first private opera and ballet house in the region. This house has also produced significant plays before, in cooperation with the Association of Professional Ballet Dancers, Choreographers, and Ballet Padagogues of Serbia.
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