Painful dance

Production: National theatre Užice

Premiere date: 14.2.2021.

Writer: Dimitrije Kokanov

Costume design: Maja Mirković

Stage movement: Igor Koruga

Composer: Luka Mejdžor

Light design: Aleksandar Rosić

CAST

Hadži Nemanja Jovanović

Vanja Kovačević

Branislav Ljubičić

Biljana Zdravković

The play takes a real event of murder as its starting point, a kind of leitmotif, which establishes the thematic framework of the content. The perpetrator, after the act, justified his actions on social media, pointing out the causes and culprits, paying tribute to his slain love, and concluding the whole confession with the statement - "I didn't want to, fuck it." This sentence is often quoted thereafter, it has become part of popular culture, recognizable as a toponym for - in this particular case, a highly paradoxical - unrequited love, relying on the famous local myth of passion "in a Balkan way," where love borders on and/or equates with death, emotions are passionate in their manifestation, life is wild, and instincts take precedence over ethics and laws. Beneath the flamboyant, expressive, sensual milieu, the patriarchal, conservative gender structure is exoticized, where chauvinism, machismo, sexism are taken as the assumed reference system supported by both men and women.