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T h e...N A T I O N A L...D R A M A...A N D...T H E A T R E...S E L E C T I O N |
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Sterijino Pozorje Festival |
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Novi Sad |
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May 26th - June 4th 2007 |
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WEDNESDAY - MAY 30th 2007 |
Grand Stage, Serbian National Theatre |
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19:30 |
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Based on selected texts by
William Shakespeare and Jan Kott
The CIRCUS HISTORY
BITEF & Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade |
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Idea, set design, choreography and music selection
SONJA VUKICEVIC
Costume designer
DRAGANA OGNJENOVIC
Make up and styling
JELENA MACIC
Video artist
SLOBODAN MIJIN
Duration approx. 65 min
Premiere: September 24th 2006, BITEF Festival |
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Macbeth |
BRANISLAV LECIC |
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Hamlet |
ANITA MANCIC |
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King Lear |
DRAGAN MICANOVIC |
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Othello |
TAMARA VUCKOVIC |
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Richard III |
HRISTINA POPOVIC |
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Titus Andronicus |
MIRA DJURDJEVIC |
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Jan Kott |
MILOS VLALUKIN |
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Clown |
MARKO ILIC |
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Dancers |
ANA STAMENKOVIC
MARIJA GRBIC
TIJANA KRSMANOVIC |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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| The GREAT MANEGE OF HISTORY |
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In his anthological, classical for quite some time now, analysis of history plays of William Shakespeare, Jan Kott has recognised the functioning of a ruthless and unrelenting principle he called The Great Mechanism Of History. This principle entails, as it is well known, historical movement reduced to an enchanted, hellish circle in which every ascent to power begins as a righteous battle against tyranny, and inevitably ends in yet another tyranny. The inner necessity of this process is that the pretender to the throne, almost unconsciously, begins to perform the very same villainous acts he rebelled against and rose to arms the day before, so that, as soon as he has reached the top of the ladder of power, a new avenger comes after him and pushes the former into an abyss... This experience of the world and history is shared by Sonja Vukicevic and is translated, through her artistic imagination, into a powerful and metaphoric vision - a vision of a circus. Kott-esque senseless movement within a circle of crime becomes, in Sonja Vukicevic’s vision, a grotesque circus manege, in which human bodies and souls are cruelly and mercilessly - and yet seemingly so merrily -exposed, humiliated and tormented...
The selection and compilation of texts from every single play are carried out on the bases of extremely free associations, but a certain gradation is made by means of the plays’ sequence, their mutual linking. It starts with Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s beginner’s tragedy, naive and exaggerated in portraying beastly and senseless crimes. It continues with Othello, in which crime is already serious and organised, but remains within the sphere of the private, it is motivated by the basest of instincts and attains a limited outreach. It is followed by Macbeth, in which crime is already elevated to the level of a state project, and Richard III, where the crime is also state organised, but, in its ingenious monstrosity, loses its basic function and assumes an almost abstract, aesthetical shape - it grows into a self-contained and smug act. Then there is King Lear in which the piled up crimes do not only realise their effects merely within the sphere of the private and public life, but also incite forces of nature, receive an adequate echo in the overall rebellion of nature. Finally, there’s Hamlet, a tragedy, but not because it should, as it is assumed, represent a certain climax in the portrayal of history’s bloody trail: on the contrary, Sonja Vukicevic finds in it a small, but important chance for the birth of a new, more just, man and world..
Ivan MEDENICA |
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REPORT
OF ARTISTIC DIRECTOR......
AND SELECTOR...... |
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Sonja Vukicevic, one of the most important artists in the field of contemporary dance in the ex-Yugoslav territory, with her play The Circus History has not only made a comeback to the domestic scene but has penetrated the international one as well, (the play has been invited to festivals in Vienna, Chividale, Rijeka, etc.). The starting point for her original project, Sonja Vukicevic finds in the Jan Kott’s essays on Shakespeare, in the concept of the Great Mechanism of History - a pessimistic view of history as a senseless chain of crime. This Shakespearian walk around the perpetual circle of crime becomes, in the author’s very original and exciting vision, a grotesque circus manege, in which each new number cruelly and mercilessly tortures human bodies and souls. This very demanding show, which requires of the actors and actresses dancing, juggling and acrobatic skills, features a group of top-class drama performers.
Ivan MEDENICA |
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SONJA VUKICEVIC
As a member of Ballet of National Theatre Belgrade, she danced the entire classical and neoclassical repertoire. Her most significant parts realised at the National Theatre: Myrth in Giselle (chor. Leonid Lavrovsky), Darinka in Darinka’s Gift (chor. Vera Kostic), Deborah in Golem (chor. Dimitrije Parlic), Aphrodite in Triumphs of Aphrodite’s (chor. Sparemblek), Captain Hook in Peter Pan (chor. by Vera Kostic), parts in the ballet productiosn of An Afternoon of a Faun (chor. Dusko Trninic) and Ohrid Legend (chor. Dimitrije Parlic), as well as the ballet divertisment in Carmen, the opera. She received awards for each of these parts respectively.
She has worked as a choreographer in productions of plays directed by leading directors of former and current Yugoslavia - Dusan Jovanovic, Ljubisa Ristic, Haris Pasovic, Gorcin Stojanovic, Irfan Mensur, Ivana Vujic, Nikita Milivojevic, Radmila Vojvodic, Branislav Lecic, Aleksandar Popovski, Sasa Milenkovski. She has also cooperated with international directors: C. Johnson (King Lear), M. Hocker (Natio)...
An important part of her work is constituted by the choreography work on drama productions of Yugoslav Drama Theatre of Belgrade, starting from mid-seventies: Bird Calling (dir. Haris Pasovic), Jester (dir. Irfan Mensur), Last Days Of Mankind (dir. Gorcin Stojanovic), Blue Bird (dir. Irfan Mensur), Nijinsky (dir. Irfan Mensur), Mein Kampf (dir. Gorcin Stojanovic), Salome (dir. Roman Viktyuk). She received many YDP annual awards for these productions.
For the first edition of international festival of Cividale, she worked on the production of Medea, after the play by Arpad Genz, alongside director Ivana Vujic.
As of mid nineties, she commences her independent career as a choreographer and a director, at Centre For Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade. She realised four projects there: McBeth/IT (1996), after the tragedy by William Shakespeare and to the music by Zoran Eric; Alzheimer (1998); The Trial, after the novel by Franz Kafka and to the music by Zoran Eric (1998); Midsummer Night’s Darkness, after the comedy Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (1999).
She actively collaborates with director Tomaz Pandur; she performed in his productions of Dictionary of the Khazars and A Hundred Minutes, as well as in the months long preparations of the project of Caligula, after the play by Camus. With the production of A Hundred Minutes, they toured the festival of Cividale and realised a two month long tour in Spain, from Tenerife to Madrid.
Following the suggestion of Vida Ognjenovic, president of the Council of Bitef, she worked on the first independent production in the fourty year long history of this festival, the project of Circus History. |
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History as a continual circus
If you are fond of skills of the art of circus (I never seem to know whether circus is an art or a skill), if you admire jugglers, clowns, neck breaking roller-skating, gymnastically impressive play and other riches of this entertainment highly valued worldwide, you can watch the production of Circus History as a very content viewer, admiring the skills of our well known actors playing the ‘parts’ quite different from those we are used to seeing them cast as… In a space of a circus manege, Sonja Vukicevic created a distinct, intense and painful Great Manege Of History with its bloody trail, in which actresses admirably delivered the lines of male characters from Shakespeare and actors those of the female. From the stage conceived thus, a dramatic and dynamic impulse of all performers flow in unison, and every one of them would deserve a praise comprised of particularly well chosen words.
Milica ZAJCEV (Danas)
History and hopelesness
Materialising the thesis that Shakespeare was a pop artist par excellence, Sonja Vukicevic’s Circus History presents the great individual and social dramas in an ultimate pop form impressive in its moderate spectacularity and a series of critically well grounded, poetic-philosophic thoughts.
Ana TASIC (Politika)
A chronicle of horror
While the actors incessantly shower darts of well thought out concepts from Shakespeare’s work upon the audience, ‘Circus History’ simultaneously functions as a letter of horrible intent and gory history in its pure form. The production hovers on a thin edge between humanity and utter dehumanisation: mankind and its features are erased, ethics, aesthetics and morality, and it turns out that what was valid a hundred years ago is no longer so, and that the world, selfish as it is, can no longer move forward.
Bojan MUNJIN (Feral Tribune)
Circus History is a choreo-spectacle along the lines of the highest achievements of Sonja Vukicevic’s creative voice.
The greatest value of this production are its protagonists.
We are not used to seeing our actors dance, sing, perform acrobatic tricks, all the while delivering the lines with a dramatic precision and impressiveness. From now on, nothing is as it used to be!
Slobodan SAVIC (Glas javnosti) |
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.The management preserves the right to change the schedule
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Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2007.
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