Balkan Dance project was created in 2013. So far BDP created 2 international dance productions combining artists from Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy.
He He helium was a first dance production. A dance yoyage across post-Yugoslavian cultural space. It is as well a first ballet about Yugoslavia with an original music score composed by macedonian composer Goran Bojcevski. Choreography was made by Igor Kirov from Macedonia as well. Dramaturgist was Mirjana Blazevic Lesic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The choreo-drama He, he, helium finds its inspiration in the eponymous poem by a young poetess from Sarajevo, Adisa Bašić, and it tells the story of a group of passengers on the Orient Express, somewhere at the gateway to Europe... Travelling from east to west, the train stops for no obvious reason at the Slovene-Croatian border. The group of four young people coincidentally meets in a small second-class waiting room at the local train station. They come from various places of the post-Yugoslavian space, different from each other (and yet similar), each with their own story, permeated by the cultural and historical tradition of their places. They introduce themselves briefly, with superiority. Passion overcomes reason and the stream of events in the waiting room becomes unpredictable. Heated emotions range from euphoria to depression, from love and jealousy to wrath and aggression. After a spiritual and physical concord (leaving some ashamed and others hurt), tired from all that had happened, they try to rise into a normal state like a phoenix from the ashes. Locked in a tiny room, forced to live with the formed alter-ego, with inarticulate wishes, shadows of the past, lost hope of better times, they wonder how and where they might find the key to this prison’s doors. And we wonder, too... We ask ourselves, them, and you! Is there strength enough in this colourful helium balloon, our comical double, the silent rebel that resists discipline and division, to liberate ourselves and soar into the freedom of the sky?
We believe there is!
The second production was a Balkan Dance Project Vol 1, which was a double bill programe by two choreograhers: Aleksandar Saša Ilić (SRB) and Igor Kirov (Mak). Aleksandar made a piece Reminisencija inspired by a famous novel of Thomas Mann-the death in Venice and Kirov created a performance about 4 woman and their stories.