Signum Teatar: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1991)

Signum theater was the first professional dance company in the late nineteen eighties in Serbia formed in 1989 in Bitef theater. The group consisted of eight dancers: Anđelija Todorović, Tatjana Pajović, Dejan Pajović, Tatjana Popović, Vesna Stanojević, Danica Arapović, Svetlana Marković, Nenad Čolić. Their stage productions were combining languages of avant-garde theater, physical theater and modern dance, centered around narratives from literary drama classics (The Thibetan book of the dead; The House of Bernarda Alba; The Images of Dorian Gray; The Macbeth looking for Macbeth). Each of these authentic dance works under the choreography of Dejan Pajović  - oscillating between non-verbal theater expressions, gesticulations, situations and strong technical dance vocabulary - showcased the group Signum in full creative and professional superiority. The expressiveness of Pajović's work had a constant value, whether in the austerely simple set design, minimal script or in dancers' expressiveness awakening all of their cells, not just their dance apparatus. The "map" of a human face and the language of the body could replace and succinctly convey the intensity of literary narration. By writing a new alphabet of movement and dance theater, Pajović passionately affirmed sensuality as a sign of erotic tension and visual ecstasy. Such an understanding of sensuality, and the exclusivity of the body in general, was brought to a state of sonority in the project Macbeth Searches for Macbeth performed in 1992 in Bitef theater.