The Music Center of Montenegro in Podgorica will open its dance season tonight, October 25th, with the ballet “Odustajanje” choreographed by Aleksandar Ilić and directed by Mario Pavlo del Monaco, on the Big Stage starting at 8:00 p.m.
The ballet “Odustajanje” was received with a standing ovation at the opening of this year’s edition of the Adriatic Dance Festival in Budva, and was based on the motifs of Miloš Crnjanski’s “Roman o Londonu” based on the idea of Isidora Damjanović and music by Dejan Božović.
“The piece shows the situational metamorphoses of a subject who, by force of circumstances, has been displaced from his essential environment into a foreign and unaccepted environment. Resisting one identity structure to another results in loss of control over the course of fate, loss of emotional harmony in partner relationships, as well as loss of faith in the opposite, cultural, non-inherited code, alienated dictates of existence. The play has a double exposure: social and personal level of degradation, and the illumination of the protagonist through choreography and direction is all the more complex. Aleksandar Ilić and Mario del Monaco set up a concept that, through sometimes ironic, sometimes difficult and cruel transpositions of mental states, leads the characters from hope to surrender, giving up love, dreams, and faith that the world was created according to the measure of good and justice. The story coincides with current events in Europe. It tells about a Russian couple who met in Crimea and fled to Western Europe under the force of war, expecting salvation, without thinking that it was their tragic choice and path to suffering…” states Isidora Damjanović, M.Sc., theoretician of media and art.
The performance is performed by the Montenegrin Ballet Ensemble – Ksenija Sinðić, Emanuele Mascitti, Vladimir Sekulić, Tamara Radonjić, Staša Šćepanović, Tijana Dragović, Katarina Vujošević, Alina Tsoumou and Staša Radenović.
The costume for the performance was made by Mirjana Perišić Gogić, the lighting designer is Vuk Vukčević, and the choreographer’s assistant is Federika Vinćifori.
The Montenegrin Ballet Ensemble was founded on the initiative of business director Isidora Damjanović, going through the stage of ballet studio (2021), until the final formation of the Montenegrin Ballet Ensemble of the Music Center of Montenegro (2023). During its three-year operation, this young professional ensemble performed three premieres of “Tre Sorelle”, “Mediterranean” and “Masquerade”.
Photographer Aleksandar Jaredić