REVOLUTIONARY ROOM

Concept and choreography: Isidora Stanišić
Music: Darja Janošević
Dramaturge: Igor Koruga
Dancers: Bitef Dance Company: Ana Ignjatović Zagorac, Miona Petrović, Jakša Filipovac, Nataša Gvozdenović, Tamara Pjević, Boris Vidaković, Nikola Živković

Today, when each of us perceives the idea of a workers’ society built on social solidarity as if seen through a mist of nostalgia, in the time when the emphatic self which finds its integrity in the spirit of togetherness gets embodied in emoticons, a simple allusion to the change of a political and social system we live in leads to a belief that the end of the world is far more easily conceivable than the end of capitalism. Whether we speak of the consequences of disappointed political expectations in all the revolutions, which led only to the change of the leading structures and deepened the gap between the social classes, or of a general transformation of the modern-day interpersonal love into a negotiation between business partners, dictated by the laws of the market, a question persists: where is the hope? Who is in charge of it today? Revolutionary room examines the possibility of an essential (inner, moral, personal, and rational) reformation of an individual rushing to the narcissistic ideology of the new age, but also of the essential reformation of the social order. Even after we, as people of the modern neoliberal and capitalist society, manage to consciously abandon hypnotic ideologies of the self-help actualization and self-popularization, thus realizing the presence of a lethargic, melancholic, hopeless and depressive realism we all live, we are still facing an overwhelming challenge: are we capable of (emotionally) facing those circumstances? Does it suit us? How to turn that challenge from an isolated case of each individual, to a common issue which concerns us all?

Founded in 2009, Bitef Dance Company is the first contemporary dance company in Serbia attached to a cultural institution, which offers an opportunity to the audience to follow high-quality dance theatre throughout theatre season. In the course of the ten years of its existence, Bitef Dance Company has had thirty-two dance productions and over a hundred and fifty visits in the country and abroad (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia…). The company has established cooperation with some of the renowned choreographers in Serbia, the region and abroad, some of whom are: Guy Weizman, Roni Haver, Jasmin Vardimon, Isidora Stanišić, Edward Clug, Constanza Macras, Matjaž Farič, Dalija Aćin, Zoran Marković, Maša Kolar, Branko Potočan, Leo Mujić, Dunja Jocic… The performances The Scents of Cinnamon, Othello, Divine Comedy, Carmen in IV Rounds, Alpha Boys, Yesterday, Don Juan, Birds… have all contributed to the creation of a new audience which follow dance repertory. Moreover, a new dance scene for children has been opened with an aim to bring the art of dance closer to the youngest audience.