From the gift: Ensemble of the play, Photo: City Theater

INTERVIEW Staša Zurovac: Art is a privilege, but also a great responsibility

"The city theater gave us the wind at our backs, and at the same time the motivation to have a point in the constellation of our journey that further motivates us", says the director and choreographer of the play "Runaways" in an interview with "Vijesti".

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From the gift: Ensemble of the play, Photo: City Theater
From the gift: Ensemble of the play, Photo: City Theater
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

STaša Zurovac this summer he was engaged as the director and choreographer of the play "Runaways", which was performed in Budva, on the stage between the churches as part of the 37th Grad Theater festival.

Zurovac came from the School of Classical Ballet in Zagreb, where he graduated in the class of prof. Tatjane Lucić-Šarić, and trained in St. Petersburg. From 1989, he was a member of the ballet of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, where he worked with numerous world-renowned choreographers such as: Milko Šparemblek, Martino Müller, Ted Brandsen, Vasco Wellenkamp, ​​Gagik Ismailian, Peter Breuer, Dinko Bogdanić, Patrick Delcroix and others.

He won numerous awards in his dance and choreographic career. One of the biggest challenges in his career was the moment when he got the opportunity to stage the ballet "Who's Singing There" at the National Theater in Belgrade, based on a film model. Slobodan Šijan. The play has toured the world, has over 200 performances, and Zurovac won the City of Belgrade Award in 2004. His performance "Circus primitif ballet", for which he won the Croatian Theater Award for the best choreographic achievement in 2006, is also remembered.

He won the most significant Croatian cultural award, the "Vladimir Nazor" award, for the ballet "Proces", based on the novel of the same name. Franz Kafka, premiered at the Music Biennale in Zagreb in 2009. Since then, he has choreographed dozens of very successful plays...

From a gift: Zurovac
From a gift: Zurovacphoto: City Theater

How did you come up with the idea to create a dance-theater performance "Runaways" based on the novel by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarčuk?

First of all from the novel. It simply left a very strong impression on me because it corresponds very well with today's time and man. It is that moment when one immediately feels that there is something big, when the motive and inspiration are unquestionable. Olga Tokarčuk wrote "Runaways" as a dedication to travel and escape, the search for meaning and aimless wandering. Are there any more topical topics today, when more than half of the world is traveling, fleeing from various kinds of horrors and tragedies or simply driven by the motives of their own longings? I also wanted to give dedication and life to that work in some other form. This is what is the biggest challenge for us artists, to share some topics that are painful, strong, unbearable or incomprehensible through a kind of sublimate with the viewers. That as much as possible, we find a way to convey to them some messages that we recognize as important, that will enrich them with understanding, beauty or experiencing a deep emotion.

Synonymous with movement is movement, that came together in a really beautiful way in this play?

The very theme of movement and travel is something that is an integral part of the life of anyone who practices dance. Players travel a lot, change places, change their bodies and their souls, travel through that whole expressed by the changes of the outer and inner world. This is what the novel deals with, it deals not only with the physical, external journey but also with the geography and anatomy of the human interior and in a way gives us the opportunity to open some windows that we don't have the opportunity to open in this speed in which we live today. The author says that the way of traveling nowadays has also changed, she writes how we jump from plane to plane, from point to point, we skip time and in this way she points to what travel used to be like. Once upon a time, man's inner change changed with the landscape he was passing through, closer to the ground. If we travel by train, we see what is happening outside and everything that is inside us communicates with the environment in a different way. She also says that she was looking for a form in which to write a novel for a long time, and that for the reasons just mentioned, she decided on the form she called the "constellation novel". We land on points that are similar everywhere, and then we go further to look for and experience the diversity of some space, external and internal. Very interestingly, he said in an interview: "When we look at the starry sky and see all those stars, we see different formations and shapes." However, if we were to go up there, we would see that in reality it is not there and that it is our projection.” What was interesting to me in that projection of ours is the point from which we look, which is also part of that constellation. That was also one of the main motives to use that point for each of us to count our life experiences that we recognize while traveling through the novel. The novel, its characters, and even the author in the role of a kind of narrator, are based half on reality, half on fiction, so we wanted to bring to the stage the truth of what is written in the novel together with the truth of our life experience.

A scene from a play
A scene from a playphoto: City Theater

How did you manage to gather so many great players from different parts of the world in one performance?

Everything started from the author team. Alexander Balanescu, an incredible artist, violinist virtuoso and a wonderful composer, with whom I have already had many wonderful collaborations, has ventured with me to realize our long-cherished dream of collaborating on a work in a larger form, where he will perform his music live with his famous Balanescu Quartet. Also and Bjanka Adžić Ursulov, also a fantastic artist, costume designer and stage designer, in my opinion one of the greatest, with whom I have shared an artistic journey for a long time. They were the first from the team with whom I shared my enthusiasm for the novel. Their consent and joint recognition of Olga Tokarčuk's work was the initial capsule. Also, I've been spending a lot of my artistic life in Linz, Austria for several years now, and I've invited several wonderful dance artists to a project with whom I share a current artistic affinity. A completely international team of artists, Juko Harada, Nurija Jimenez Vilaroja, Kasija Vrbanac Strelkin, Lucija Kukor, Juliana Vargas Rodriguez, Shao Yang Hsi. They followed us too David Kent, permanent sound engineer of the Balanescu Quartet, Marko Mijatović as a lighting designer, and later a dancer joined us Nikola Prato who replaced Shao Yang who was on tour in Portugal during our visits to Bar and Budva. By some wonderful miracle, a space opened up in time, in our life and artistic aspirations, and we found ourselves together in this, fortunately, long-term process.

From the play
From the playphoto: City Theater

It is important to emphasize that this is an independent production. Did that make it harder?

It is demanding for one man to present an organizational, production and artistic piece that includes fourteen artists, ten of whom are on stage and also aims to perform at three festivals. You know that in a way I was born in the mainstream theater and I did most of the plays in the national theaters, and this was perhaps the first major excursion on the independent stage where I tried to turn to advantage what is impossible in the repertory theater that has its own more or less cloned rhythm and the default time frame. A framework that today is becoming more and more compressed due to hyperproduction in which there is actually no more opportunity for real research. I decided on a long-term process, of almost six months, in which we jointly tried to create an opportunity to recognize ourselves first of all as people, and then as artists, and to delve as deeply as possible into the work. Also, we wanted to enter a different way of working, which truly respects diversity and to recognize something that we are used to calling a mistake as pure potential. It was a decision based on the belief that we can get to know something else, that something that may have frustrated us through life in the repertory theater should be sought within ourselves and changed there, and not in the outside world. I believe that such a process, in which there was no judgment at any time, produced different results. We tried to deal with the perfection of the moment of performance, that is, we avoided creating a theater of reproduction. It was also sometimes demanding because we all had to deal with our own habits of an opposite nature that were not always easy to transform.

From the play 'The Runaways'
From the play "The Runaways"photo: City Theater

Is freedom and penetration into the essence of the role of contemporary play in today's society?

I believe that it is, first and foremost, a deep penetration into the essence of oneself. Because it's hard to convey a message if you don't understand it yourself. In order to understand it yourself, you have to really deal with it, have the opportunity to stay within yourself, allow yourself peace and stability in which things could reach you, and not you to them. I believe that it is also a nicer way to communicate with viewers. Today's time is such that we are all chasing something and it seems to us that when we achieve it, maybe we will achieve some happiness. However, if this does not happen, the other side always appears, frustrations, accidents, traumas and the like. I am convinced that it can be achieved if we dare to work and live in a different way. Art has also become something that it is not in its source and foundation, which is that people visit theaters, exhibitions, concerts and every kind of art in order to somehow forget about themselves, about that present life which is not easy for most of today's world. This means that, in a way, art has become an escape from life, not a part of it. I believe that the direction of that rotation should be reversed, so that we can see that this imaginary border between the viewer and what is happening on the stage does not actually exist, that is, that it is one whole and a space without borders. We cannot determine where that line is and when exactly a play begins and when it ends and whether it even begins or ends. I feel that it is possible for the reality of art to reach the reality of life without friction. A big task, but one that is worth doing because doing art is indeed a privilege, but because of that, a great responsibility. Privilege in the sense that we can make mistakes unlike a surgeon or a bus driver. We always have a second rehearsal, a second performance, and mistakes are an equal element in our work. This is not the case in other professions. Very often this privilege is not respected enough, but I believe that a real artist who understands what this is really about understands that as much as he is free, he is equally responsible in what and how he creates. Our task is to find a way to show with that privilege and dedication that every life and every existence is actually ours and not someone else's and that regardless of the distance, we share the same moment.

Bjeguni, Staša Zurovac
photo: City Theater

Grad Teatr points out that they have been proud partners in this project since its inception. How did that collaboration come about?

Cooperation came about very simply, with my invitation to the Festival director, who immediately recognized that it was an independent production that was created in a reverse way compared to the repertory theater, which means that the finances are first secured, and then what is planned and turned out finance makes it possible. Here it's the other way around, first you move into the process, then you get the money, and then the second competition, between that again the process and so on. So it's mrs Milena Lubarda Marojević recognized this at the very start and supported us both financially and by inviting us to the festival while the play was practically still in the making. This means a lot in an independent production, because when you apply for some kind of competition and ask for money to be a guest at a festival, you must also have an official invitation from that festival. The city of theater gave us the wind at our backs, and at the same time the motivation to have a point in the constellation of our journey that further motivates us. It is a privilege that we had such a friend, and when you accept help from a friend, you also accept responsibility. It is a real rarity in independent production that institutions and festivals recognize you while the play is still in the making, without knowing what they are buying and how the whole process will end. City theater is with the Contemporary Dance Week in Zagreb and Mrs Mirna Žagar, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Anton Bruckner University and the independent association RedSapata TANZFABRIK from Linz was one of the key partners without whom we would not be here in Budva. It should be said that in the meantime we also received an invitation from the festival "Barski ljetopis" to open their festival on July 15, so that this is our third appearance in Budva.

Should we now ask you what your next plans are or maybe ask you what you are reading so that we can find out based on that?

I am reading a novel for the umpteenth time Abdullah Sidran "Do you remember Dolly Bell?". I am grateful that I received a wonderful invitation from the director of the National Theater in Sarajevo, Mr Dino Mustafić, who invited me to create an original work inspired by that iconic work. I believe people know more about that title from the title of the same name Kusturica's movie. So that process starts in September and hopefully ends successfully sometime at the end of November. Also, I was invited by Triko Cirkus Theater from Zagreb to create a show with the working title "Cargo". Here, the journey continues, one through memory, and the other through the theme of what is transmitted...

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