Brevijar: Do You Love Zadar? – Zadar Dance Ensemble

Venue: ZPC
Duration: 50 min.

The new production of the Croatian National Theatre Zadar, in collaboration with the Zadar Dance Ensemble, Breviary: Do You Love Zadar?, is an invitation to dialogue and a reminder of the power of theatre as a means of social critique and transformation. This stage work, directed and choreographed by Sanja Petrovski in collaboration with her dancers, is interdisciplinary in character, positioned on the boundary between form and content. The performance is also an incentive to seek out spaces of togetherness, support and resistance within the artistic community, an affirmation of identity, and a presentation of a cross-section of accumulated knowledge within the local environment.

The theme of the performance was identified through several literary and journalistic forms of expression: Predrag Matvejević’s Mediterranean Breviary, Ante Perković’s Do You Love Zadar?, Slobodan Novak’s short novel The Lost Homeland, and Mediterranean Armerun by Bruno Ćurko and photographer Stipe Surać. All of these works share a similar structure, which also served as the format for the performance. A city thousands of years old, with the pronounced charm of a Mediterranean culture of living, is in a way the main protagonist of the performance. Zadar is a city that has been demolished and rebuilt, that has changed and created its own new history like no other city on the coast. Achieving a balance between tradition and personal evolution, while at the same time bridging the traumas that arise from being confronted with the terrors of today’s reality, is the task set by the dancers of the Zadar Dance Ensemble, offering a solution through bodily presence and constant renewal.

The extratextual reality — mythical, historically real and surrealist — is present in Ante Perković’s tourist guide Do You Love Zadar? It is a guide through notable events from Zadar’s history, a chronology of events seen from a different perspective. Selected intertwined motifs from this cult book tell the story of a city that, at the height of its civilizational achievement, disappears and loses its identity. The communication between people and the city, stolen and memorized moments, dialogues through dance and movement, bodily memory inscribed through petrified memories — all of this is presented through the interpretation of contemporary dance theatre and physical theatre. The connection between people and the city is dynamically incorporated through the relationship between theatre, dance and music.

The performance was created as a collage format of analogies of experiences presented in the book, in parallel with the associations awakened in the performing artists during the creative process.

How can one create a performance that is attractive — visually, sonically, and ultimately emotionally — not only to dance audiences? A performance that touches upon the ambience of the Mediterranean, without falling into the trap of conventions and triviality?
(Sanja Petrovski)

Concept, Direction and Choreography: Sanja Petrovski
Music: Ante Perković (Postoji plan, Svi me vole dok me ne upoznaju, 0:0 u gostima), Jere Šešelja and Žarko Marinković
Lighting Design: Galen Matulina / Igor Petrovski
Sound Design: Jere Šešelja / Marta Huber
Costume and Props Selection: Sanja Petrovski
Set Design: John Čolak
Performers and Co-choreographers: Anđela Bugarija, Patricia Gospić, Bernarda Klarin, Nataša Kustura, Natali Mahmić, Josipa Štulić and Korina Oltran
Narrator: Alen Liverić
Performance Photography: Željko Karavida / Adrijana Vidić
Thanks: Venci Jurin