Isidora Stanišić: Revolutionary Room (2018)

Bitef dance company was founded in 2009 as the first contemporary dance troupe in Serbia tied to a cultural institution, enabling the audience to follow high-quality dance theater throughout the entire theater season. Over fifteen years of existence, Bitef Dance Company has produced over forty dance productions and participated in over two hundred performances both domestically and internationally (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia...). The company has won twenty-seven awards and collaborated with some of the most eminent domestic, regional, and European choreographers, such as Guy Weizman, Roni Haver, Jasmin Vardimon, Isidora Stanišić, Edward Clug, Constanza Macras, Matjaž Farič, Dalija Aćin, Zoran Marković, Maša Kolar, Branko Potočan, Leo Mujić, Dunja Jocić, and Felix Landerer. The performances *Scents of Cinnamon, Othello, Divine Comedy, Space for Revolution, Alpha Boys, Sonnets, Yesterday, Birds, Cities That No Longer Exist...* have contributed to forming a new audience that regularly follows dance theater. In 2017, the *Young Bitef Dance Company* was formed, consisting of students from the Contemporary Dance Department of the Lujo Davičo Ballet School. The very first production of this company was called Paranoia Chic, choreographed by Isidora Stanišić. The performance explored  topics of alienation, lack of communication and overall paranoia from various natural and non only natural catastrophes imposed by modern civilization (flu, fatal infections etc). The unstoppable growth of paranoia is shown through various stage means: from the shocking, yet due to its carnival nature, comical "trick" of crashing through the walls of the set (a metaphor for "banging one's head against a wall"), to the change in light color from green to red - the American alert scale. The very four dancers of this performance (Milica Pisić, Olga Olćan, Nevena Jovanović, and Ana Ignjatović-Zagorac) were also first members of the company, which was suppose to provide a permanent space for work, returning Bitef Theatre to its original mission of promoting new and different theatrical tendencies. Unfortunately, fifteen years later, the company is not structurally supported by the local governmental bodies responsible to distribute resources for arts and culture.