Who Sings There

Who Sings There

ballet to the music of Vojislav Vokic Kostic

April 17, 2025

Grand Stage, 19:30

TWO HUNDREDTH MAD RIDE

The ballet performance Who Sings There quite shook the cultural public, back in 2004. It was based on the screenplay of the eponymous film by Dusan Kovacevic, with music by Vojislav Vokic Kostic, choreographed and directed by Stasa Zurowac. The attractive cast, where there are no main or supporting roles, the top-notch music that gives the performance a special recognizability, excellent choreography and direction, are just some of the segments that have secured its cult status, as confirmed by the fact that it has reached its two-hundredth performance on the stage of the National Theatre.

At the very beginning, there was a certain apprehension about how the cultural public would accept the fact that someone had the courage to stage Who Sings There in ballet form, especially due to the 1980 anthology film. However, already at the premiere performance on December 22, 2004, all doubts were dispelled. Ballet art enthusiasts embraced it enthusiastically, and affection was shown not only by journalists and critics but also by those who had not previously attended ballet performances.

From the first notes, the audience breathes with the performers and becomes another passenger in the mad ride. In an attempt to analyze the phenomenon of the success of the ballet Who Sings There, we come across numerous symbols that give it a special specificity, which the audience recognizes, such as the Bus as a box in which people are trapped on a one-way journey. Within this claustrophobic construction, different characters collide, representing a picture of our mentality, but also a paradigm of life that has never been comfortable at the crossroads of East and West. The ballet is full of archetypal symbols woven into our beings, and that is why we recognize and understand them so infallibly. Opposite structures shape our lives, and we discover them in cult scenes of the ballet such as Wedding and Funeral, characters of Death and Angel, and finally Army, which symbolizes various wars that, unfortunately, numerous generations from these areas remember. The skillful and lucid choreographic and directorial handwriting of Stasa Zurowac has brought this performance closer to audiences worldwide, as evidenced by numerous guest appearances:

Who Sings There is the first ballet performance in recent theater history, which was performed as part of the prestigious International Theater Festival BITEF (2005). This ballet won the Annual Award of the National Theatre for the best performance in the 2004/2005 season, the April Award of the City of Belgrade, and the Award of the Association of Ballet Artists of Serbia Dimitrije Parlic.

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