With the play “Future”, co-pro- duced by the Belgrade Drama The- atre and City Theatre Ljubljana, di- rector Žiga Divjak continues his exploration of dystopian visions of the world that are characteristic of his style. This almost nonverbal performance tells a story of birds en- countering the waste that humans leave behind, prompting audience members to urgently re-examine their own relationship with nature. Bitch power for the finale Closing this year’s festival is a piece that fluctuates between gen- res, “The Cadela Força [Bitch Bitch Strenght] Trilogy - Chapter I: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderel- la” by Brazilian-Dutch artist Caroli- na Bianchi and her Brazilian dance
troupe Cara de Cavalo. Starting from the story of rape through the prism of art history – from painting to per- formance art – Bianchi goes a step further by expanding this context through her own experience of sex- ual violence and placing herself as a performer in extreme circumstanc- es on stage... Ethics and/or aesthetics? This year’s iteration of the fes- tival takes place under the slogan “Beauty will (not) save the world”, while the main programme has been put together by a selection team comprising artistic director Nikita Milivojević, executive direc- tor and co-selector Ksenija Đurović, and playwright and co-selector Tija- na Grumić. According to them, just
as Dostoevsky was referring to the virtue and beauty of the human soul when he said that beauty will save the world, in this context beauty pri- marily represents an ethical catego- ry, and not just an aesthetic one. “The ambivalence of this slo- gan in a world torn apart by wars, brutality, terrible injustices and ex- treme social divisions, suggests crit- ical consideration of whether any- thing, even something as sublime and noble as beauty, can really save such a world, explain BITEF 58’s se- lection team. “Apart from the fact that the works to be staged within the scope of the main programme articulate this question in various ways, they are also precious in that they simultaneously leave room for the possibility of salvation.”
Theatre » Pozorište | 45
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