About Festival

Four acrobats are facing the outcome of the confrontation. At times they play against one another, at times they choose to play together. Their choices will demand sacrifices at the account of their honour. They are chasing goals and accepting defeats. 

Once again, like countless times before, a person's gaze on you. In your mind echoes the thought: how will the challenge turn out this time? Observe. Anticipate. React. Innumerably, but every time different, every time anew. You observe yourself by carrying out the challenge, and while truth never slips through your fingers you get to know yourself over again. Thoughts are poking you to crumble your attendance, to make you lose the sense of meaningful matters. Once more with a profound will you build castles in the sky, and once more they demolish before you. And then again, like countless times before you gaze into your own eyes. 

After a successful collaboration in 2019, Cirkusfera, Cirkorama and Un loup pour l’homme have chosen to build this project to give encouragement to artists of Serbia and Croatia to continue stepping on the path of professional circus careers. They have rather chosen to use the artistic circumstances to their advantage, and not to succumb to its deficits. By embracing the cultural environment they devoted themselves to the creative process.

Discipline: partner/aerial acrobatic
Authors and performers: Hristina Šormaz, Danka Sekulović, Nemanja Jovanović, Jelena Kalaica
Co-production: Cirkusfera / Serbia, Cirkorama / Croatia, Un loup pour l’homme / France
Artistic direction: Alexandre Fray, Špela Vodeb, Nikola Mijatović

Support by: CirkoБalkana festival, Teatroskop – Southeastern European Network for Performing Arts (a program initiated by French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, French Ministry of Culture, and Institut français Paris), Institut français in Paris, Institut français in Serbia, Institute français in Croatia, Ministry of culture and information of Republic of Serbia, Bitef theater, Bitef Festival, KC Magacin, Circus Residential Network (supported by Ministry of Culture and Media of Republic of Croatia, Municipality of Zagreb, City office of Culture)

All our experiences from birth onwards, as well as those we inherit, are inscribed and collected in our body, mind and spirit. Our presence in the present, our perception of ourselves and of our surroundings, our choices through action and reaction, including our movement, our own dance, is a reflection of all we have experienced in our personal and collective history. Parte Parte is a dance duet exploring the space that splits and forms between the two worlds; the one we live in here and now, and the one that has shaped us and our bodies without our awareness or consciousness.

Choreography and performance: Petra Chelfi & Petra Valentić
Set design and costumes: Zdravka Ivandija Kirigin
Music: Miro Manojlović
Light design: Anton Modrušan
Photography: Jelena Janković
Graphic design: Martina Granić
Producer: Petra Glad Mažar
Production: Association of Professional Dance Artists PULS, Mediterranean Dance Center
Supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media RH, Kultura Nova Foundation
Thanks to: Zagreb Dance Center, Ivana Pavlović, Andreja Jandrić, Filip Beatović, Matea Bilosnić, Nina Križan, Sintija Kučić, Rozalija Alexander
Opening night: July 9th 2021

Petra Valentić graduated from CODARTS in 2009, became a member of Zagreb dance company in 2012. In 2014. she was nominated for best female dancer in Croatia. In 2017. she became president of The Association of Professional Dance Artists "PULS". In 2020. She became artistic director of Zagreb Dance Center. Petra Chelfi was a member of Zagreb Dance Company (2009 – 2018). In 2016 she received the award for the best female dancer in Croatia. She continually works as a dance and yoga teacher. She graduated psychology and founded Kompakt – organization which offers educational programs combining dance and theatre tools with psychology.

My babusja does not know the term biopower is a new project by the authors Nastasja Štefanić Kralj and Matija Kralj Štefanić, created as a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is connected with the Nastasjas Ukrainian origins, primarily the fact that her grandmother continued to live in Berdyansk, Ukraine, under Russian occupation, for the entire duration of the war. As the title of the project connotes, the authors in the project combine an experiential approach with theoretical insights, creating an intimate solo that moves away from direct political agitation, but in another way speaks directly and openly about the war. Her family ties with Ukraine thus become a framework for thematizing much broader questions about the nature of human existence in a world where the state of war is a permanent state.

Idea and Concept: Nastasja Štefanić Kralj I Matija Kralj Štefanić
Choreography and Performance: Nastasja Štefanić Kralj
Dramaturgy: Jasna Jasna Žmak
Text: Matija Kralj Štefanić I Jasna Jasna Žmak
Light Design: Anton Modrušan
Technical Support: Ariana Prpić
Production Manager: Tena Bošnjaković
Visual Design: Paula Šantić
Photography: Neven Petrović

Nastasja Stefanic Kralj is a dance artist and musician based in Zagreb. She holds a BA and an MA degree in viola which she received from the Music Academy in Zagreb, and BA degree in contemporary dance that she got at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. Nastasja makes her own pieces and also collaborates regularly with both Croatian and foreign artists. Her works were presented at festivals in Croatia, UK, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Albania. She works as a teaching assistant at the Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Matija Kralj is a visual artist and director focused on experimental and documentary film. He graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb - the departments of sculpture, animated film and new media. The subject of space politics permeates his entire opus in a direct or indirect way. For the last 12 years he has been actively exhibiting his works in Zagreb and foreign galleries and events (Gallery Nova, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Pogon Jedinstvo, Supplement Art Gallery, University of Aegean, ETH Zurich, Crvena Sarajevo, Goethe institute Ankara, Humboldt - Universität zu Berlin, AKTO festival, etc.), along with Jelena Pašić, he founded and organized the Cultural Elevator project, and his photographs could be found in various magazines such as Život umjetnosti (101st edition) - front page, Funambulist, TAZ.de, Vizkultura, Outsider magazine, Architect's Bulletin, Level.

Spontaneously Vulnerable Experience (SVE) is a solo journey on stage during which Lucija Romanova draws inspiration from the truth of existence and the potential of the moment.

Author and performer: Lucija Romanova

Lucija Romanova was born in Zagreb. She graduated from the Ana Maletic School of Contemporary Dance, after which she entered the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam, where she graduated in 2018. During her studies, she collaborated with choreographers such as Liat Tamara Waysbort (ex Batsheva dance company), Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo (ex Ultima Vez) , Milan Tomasik (Les Slovaks), Roser Lopez Espinosa. After Amsterdam, she goes to London where she collaborates with Jasmin Vardimon Company, Tribe company, Lila Dance Company, The Waldorf Project, Kennedy Junior Muntanga Dance Theatre and in the USA with Vim Vigor Dance Company (New York). Her first author's solo Spontaneously Vulnerable Experience was created in Croatia during 2020 and 2021. In 2021 she collaborated with the company BODHI PROJECT and choreographers such as Adrienne Hod, Reut Shemesh, Paul Blackman & Christine Gouzelis (Juxsta) and Jan Lauwers. In 2022, in collaboration with the British composer Alex Paton, she created a concert dance performance Broken Hip and The Unbreakable Spirit. 

She taught as a guest lecturer at the Belgrade Institute for Artistic Dance, Ljubljana Dance Academy and the Zagreb Dance Center, at the famous dance festival Deltebre Dansa in Spain and in London in the dance centers TripSpace and House Of Mass.

Inspired by The Madwoman of Chaillot the visionary drama of Jean Giraudoux, Obligation pits one lone woman against mass evil. Our heroine is the embodiment of innocence: fragile, child-like, pure. She battles a wicked force that is relentless without using a single spoken word. Movement is her language and her weapon. Her struggle crescendos as she attempts to stop the darkness that haunts the happy, vibrant world of her own creation. It is a conflict that is transferred from the external plane to the internal - human life. Obligation is a non-verbal fantasy, which mixes clown, dance, movement, and object manipulation in the manner of a new circus. It is an allegory of a real conflict that challenges all human life.

“You see how easy it was. All you needed was one sensible woman for the world’s madness to break its fangs on.” (From The Madwoman of Chaillot)

created by Lee Delong and Nikolina Majdak
directed by: Lee Delong
the woman: Nikolina Majdak
music: Lucija Stanojevic
man in suit: Mario Milicic
light design: Andrija Santro
art design: Jasmina Dupalo
production by: Cirk Pozor 2021

The play was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, and was created with the program support of KUC Travno.

Obligation is the co-creation of director Lee Delong in collaboration with actress Nikolina Majdak, as the crown of their ten-year collaboration and nurturing and development of clown technique and poetics in artistic expression, and another contribution to the development of a new style in the Croatian art scene. From their first meeting, in 2008 in Zlarin, at an acting workshop where she came at the invitation of Leon Lučev, Nikolina Majdak begins her journey of exploring an inexhaustible field art of clown(s) and physical theater with Lee Delong as a teacher and mentor. Later, their work was translated into many plays and projects (The Nightingale, Two and a Half Sisters, Night of the Living Clowns, Feydeau-re-mi Triko Circus Theater, Crna Petra Theater Small Stage and Triko Circus Theater, etc.), some of which played at international festivals in Mexico, Slovakia, France, Belgium, etc.

The dance project Invisible (dance) is designed for 7 performers. Given the continuous redefining of the space of contemporary dance performance due to the production and epidemiological conditions of today's world, I want to fully insert dance performance into everyday life of the city centre, create ways for dance to exist, but that the viewer should be "accidentally" discovered, noticed and monitored within the everyday vibration of urban spaces. This kind of performance raises a question about itself: what is necessary to call a live performance of contemporary dance a performance, and how contemporary dance can be involved in the movement of the city. Mapping the neighbourhood, detecting the movement of people, creating personal and collective communication systems through choreographic language in conjunction with the daily pulsation of the neighbourhood and the audience in the performance are the basic phases of this site specific work process. Invisible (dance) raises, somewhat utopianly, the question of how little or how much it takes for dance to become visible.

Author and choreographer: Irma Omerzo
Performers: Ariana Prpić, Una Štlcar Furač, Ema Crnić, Anđela Bugarija, Tea Hlušička and Viktoria Bubalo
Composer and musician: Stanko Kovačić
Dramaturgy: Jasna Jasna Žmak
Costume designer: Zdravka Ivandija
Production: MARMOT

Irma Omerzo, choreographer of contemporary dance and Feldenkrais pedagogue, was born in 1969 in Zagreb. She acquired his dance education and long-term dance career in France. In Zagreb in 2001 he founded the art organisation MARMOT. She is the author of often internationally recognised all-night dance performances Mi-Nous, I don't really like that ..., Euro vision, Short program no. , Technique, Meteo, To the bone, On the go, Differences, Membrane, Spectacle, Invisible (dance) and several dance films: Dancing with…, Gray, Trisolistice, In our city, Why I love dancing ?, Meteo. He also signs short dance installations for non-theatrical spaces, performances, sociological research related to dance, dance film programming, and collaborations with artists, performers, theatre and film directors.

She is the winner of the professional award of the Association of Dance Artists of Croatia in 2011 for choreographic and pedagogical work, for advocating to improve the status of contemporary dance and dancers, and on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the art organisation MARMOT. Since its founding in 2013, the Dance Studio at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb has regularly taught Choreography, Feldenkrais Methods and Performance Workshops.

Transformers start from the idea of a transformative body by finding a vocabulary that establishes communication between two entities at the level of the physical expression, including movement, facial expressions and voice. A transformative body is a body in constant change that is guided by internal impulses, but also stimulated by external stimuli, influencing the change of the environment, space and other bodies that occur in its space. The Transformers duo investigates how two bodies, two not fully defined entities, transform each other during a meeting, whether the transformation process remains separate or necessarily divided due to interaction, whether individual entities are mirrored in each other or altered by the meeting. How can the body and its sensitivity understand the needs and desires of another body? Can the body communicate what eludes language?

Authors and performers: Ida Jolić and Marin Lemić
Sound designer: Luka Gamulin
Light designer: Marino Frankola
Photography: Iva Korenčić
Graphic design: Iva Leustek
Production: Ivan Mrđen

The project is supported by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and created in cooperation with Zagreb Dance Center within the program Choreospectar

Ida Jolić (1989, Zagreb) In 2011 she started her dance education in Tanzfabrik school (Berlin) where she gained knowledge in contemporary dance with international choreographers and teachers and where she got a certificate as a dancer. In 2015 she started her dance education in Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb where she gained a bachelor degree as a dance teacher. In 2019 she choreographed and performed a dance performance Transformers with coauthor Marin Lemić for which she received two awards from Croatian Dancers Association for the 2018/2019 season: Best choreography (Ida Jolić and Marin Lemić); Best individual performance (Ida Jolić). From 2018 she works as an assistant in contemporary dance technique in the dance department of Academy of Dramatic Arts and from 2020 she works as a guest teacher in dance department at Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 2019 she became a member of Studio-Contemporary Dance Company.

Marin Lemić (1986, Zadar) At the end of 2008, he enrolled at the dance academy in Amsterdam (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten- de Theaterschool) in the Netherlands. In 2011 he graduated from the modern theater department (MTD). From 2012 to 2016, he worked at the state national theaters in Oldenburg and Mainz (Staatstheater Oldenburg and Staatstheater Mainz) in Germany as part of a contemporary dance company where he works with various choreographers like Ann Van den Broek, Sharon Eyal, Club Guy and Roni, Alessandra Corti, Felix Berner, Sungyop Hong. He is currently working as a performer and author on various dance projects in Croatia and abroad with choreographers such as Matija Ferlin, Adrienn Hod, Zrinka Lukčec-Kiko, Marjana Krajač, Jasna Čizmek-Tarbuk, Michael Langeneckert, Cocoon Dance.

In 2020, he received the Croatian Acting Award for the best male achievement in the play Transformers and award from Croatian dancers association for the 2018/2019 season: Best choreography (Ida Jolić and Marin Lemić).

Construct is a research project based on the architectural approach to contemporary circus. The project starts with a critical analysis and reflection on rules of aerial circus disciplines. Deconstructing these elements (trapeze, hoop, rope, fabric) the goal is to understand the postulates of their design, and then redesign them with the emphasis on fragility. Fragility is a reference to risk, which has had a strong presence in traditional circus since its beginning. Konstrukt aims to transform the idea of risk in a contemporary way, through a paradox of installation that is falling apart and breaking, reminding us that a small impulse is enough to trigger big changes and to question how much control we have of the circumstances that surround us.

Author and interpreter: Dora Komenda
Production: Cirkus Kolektiv

Dora Komenda is a Croatian architect and circus artist. Simultaneously with graduating from architecture school in 2014. she discovered the circus in Cirkus Kolektiv, an association from Split, where she has been artistic co-director since 2018. Since then, she produced a couple of group and solo contemporary circus shows and performances, interdisciplinary projects and exhibitions, that were performed in Croatia, Spain, France, Belgium and Mexico. She is active in both professions, and in recent work she aims to connect these two disciplines into new performance work.

Circus Residential Network supports the development of the regional circus scene. In 2022 its providers are associations Cirkus Kolektiv and ROOM 100 from Split, Cirkorama from Zagreb, Prostor Plus from Rijeka, Čarobnjakov šešir from Pula and K.V.A.R.K. from Križevci, as part of the National Circus Platform project, financially supported by the Kultura Nova Foundation. The Circus Residential Network is also supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of Republic Croatia.

Contemporary Circus Artists Association is a newly founded organization that gathers artists and workers in the field of contemporary circus and outdoor arts. The association was founded with the goal of improving working conditions and the professionalization of the circus art sector and gaining recognition for the circus as a performing art form.

Dora Komenda and Nikola Mijatović, members of the Steering Committee, will present to you the short history of the organization and how to become a member of the organization. You can already read about the call for new members here.

As part of the Clubture-HR program exchange and cooperation in 2022, the realisation of the tour of the project Circus is a performing art everywhere except in Croatia continues. This work will be presented in Rijeka as part of the Periskop festival and at the same time cooperation with local circus artists will be realised. The project of the association Cirkorama thematises the status of the contemporary circus in Croatia in relation to the rest of Europe, placing a monumental scenography made of paper as a dominant form in an empty space. In addition to serving as a unique backdrop - a stage for circus artists for their performance - the scenography also serves as an exhibit, that is, an art installation open to the public and viewing. Composed of magazines, newspapers, flyers, programs, posters and other propaganda materials whose content is exclusively circus-themed from the author's personal collection, the installation/scenography has the form of a paper tower whose interior appearance resembles the circle of a circus tent.

Author team: Nikola Mijatović and Maxime Weinmann
Production: Cirkorama

Fakirs is a documentary that reveals the world of fakirs in Spain. A portrait of the past, present and future of a privileged few who saw their childhood dreams come true: to be able to live as fakirs. A spectacle in which control of body and mind enables fakirs to do unimaginable things. The movie "Fakirs" deals with the art of self-control and self-challenge, which will exist forever. You can watch the trailer via this link.

Circus Cinema is part of the National Circus Platform, which is implemented with the financial support of the Kultura nova Foundation. The Kino Cirkus program is coordinated by the ROOM 100 collective from Split, and screenings are held in Križevci, Pula, Rijeka, Samobor, Split and Zagreb.

The dance workshop Expressionist is intended for dancers who love movement and those who want to grow in endurance, expression and focus. The workshop begins with the articulation and division of the body into micro parts, which opens up space for the restoration and reprogramming of the body system. We are building our bodies from scratch. A new order of thought and a new articulation of movement offers a wide variety of movements and a restored body. The body is now ready to learn and explore a series of choreographed phrases based on this practice. Voice as an additional incentive is welcome. When learning given sequences, Lucija avoids copying the movements and tries to focus on experiencing the movements in the moment and from within. It is a  space in which mental and physical boundaries are moved, and playing with textures begins, which will be used for further challenges in the continuation of the workshop. The second part of the workshop takes the form of a game with the characteristics of movement, emphasizing and diminishing them both through the body and through the voice and text, in which physical virtuosity is combined with a very detailed expression of mental states and emotions. It is a search for dialogue and harmony between all levels of existence.

Lucija Romanova was born in Zagreb. She graduated from the Ana Maletic School of Contemporary Dance, after which she entered the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam, where she graduated in 2018. During her studies, she collaborated with choreographers such as Liat Tamara Waysbort (ex Batsheva dance company), Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo (ex Ultima Vez) , Milan Tomasik (Les Slovaks), Roser Lopez Espinosa. After Amsterdam, she goes to London where she collaborates with Jasmin Vardimon Company, Tribe company, Lila Dance Company, The Waldorf Project, and in the USA with Vim Vigor Dance Company (New York). Her first author's solo Spontaneously Vulnerable Experience was created in Croatia during 2020 and 2021. In 2021 she collaborated with the company BODHI PROJECT and choreographers such as Adrienne Hod, Reut Shemesh, Paul Blackman & Christine Gouzelis (Juxsta) and Jan Lauwers. She taught as a guest lecturer at Belgrade Institute for Artistic Dance, Ljubljana Dance Academy and the Zagreb Dance Center, and in London in the dance centers TripSpace and House Of Mass.

Registration: on this link via the form at the bottom of the post.