Edward Clug, Bitef dance company: Divine comedy (2011)

Having had great success with Othelo, the dance performance, on the Budva festival, in Bitef theatre, and on several other festivals and stages in the region, we have embarked on another new challenge with our partner, Budva theatre city – the staging of Dante’s Divine comedy. Choosing a choreographer was easy. My first encounter with the artistic creation of Edvard Clug happened on the 36th BITEF where he presented his piece Tango. His remarkable potential in choreography was already obvious. Belgrade Dance festival followed with Radio and Juliette, then the performance Pret a Porter. I remember noticing that one seldom sees an original choreographic handwriting – it seems everything is more or less played, everything reminds you of something you’ve already seen somewhere. But staging Pret a Porter Clug constructed a new dance language – fascinating, subtle, intriguing. He then settled in it, and continued to develop it further. I take great pride in the fact that BITEF Dance Company members have the opportunity to speak Clug’s language with their bodies. Also, I am very content that Ašhen Ataljanc has joined this production and spilled her vast talent and charisma. Finally, it is my pleasure that this absurd, surreal, reduced, at times hypnotising Divine comedy will be premiered in Budva, in this gorgeous ambiance of the old square, between two churches with the sound and the smell of the sea. I find that our dancers couldn’t wish for a better stage.

Jelena Kajgo,

director of Bitef theatre

The idea of doing Divine Comedy in a form of dance seems to me like a suicide, a very tempting one...Ironically I found my motive in Dante’s very own “suicidal attempt”, to walk the realm of death while being among the living. I wonder if he would do it again nowadays and how his Divina would look like? Probably the construction of the poem would be the same: three different levels of the soul’s condition, maybe he would add some modern, more sophisticated sins and probably change the order of their gravity with the old ones. A lot of things would be probably different, but I am convinced that time would never change his love for Beatrice. My intention with this performance is to create a situation room, a lateral rather then a parallel vision of the three levels of the poem, in which we find the eight dancers in unusual postures. Hell is placed in the contest of Standard dances in which the dancers are the competitors and judges at the same time. The form of Standard dances describes very well the criteria that our modern society is demanding: To be, perfect, competitive, beautifully fake and carry a number (well monitored) which may be erased and replaced while you are still alive. Dialog and interaction between the real and surreal is the relative principle of my concept. We all have deferent perceptions on what we see and how we translate our experiences related to the object observed. Time will gather us for an hour in which time itself will have different meaning for each-one of us. For example, the purgatory in my vision is measured in 12 minutes, which is the amount of time needed for spaghetti to be cooked. The same amount of time has a different length in the theatre and a deferent one in paradise: I want to bite a piece of Dante’s love, to chew it for hundreds of years and than, when my facial muscles get tired and l lose all of my teeth, to swallow it slowly and fall in to a long sleep. Wake up next morning and rush into the next ordinary day being a consequent number with its consequent location. HELL(O) IN HEAVEN! This is the idea and the motive of our journey.

Welcome aboard

Edward Clug