Madlenium

The dramatic streak in this primary dance performance is clear: a fairy-tale-like dreamy quality present in the romantic story about Villis Gizella intertwines with the cruel scenes from the real life of Olga Spessivtseva. So the protagonist – thin, tall, ethereal Lena Markuš, dancing the most famous parts of Adam’s Gizella, faces the roughness of the world in a psychiatric hospital and the cruel pressures from the notorious NKDV to which Spessivtseva was exposed; she was considered a traitor of the Revolution in the homeland and a Russian spy in the West. The sad unfairness of her 22-year-long imprisonment in the asylum for psychiatric patients in America in Đurović’s production was strongly emphasized, especially in the group dances, which is homogeneous in depicting dark scenes of madness that surrounded the famous ballerina for so long. The story told by dancers is accompanied successfully by video recordings of the October Revolution beginning in Russia. Seeing Spessivtseva’s dance (a variation from first act of Giselle) in an old video recording dating back to the first decades of the XX century is particularly valuable. An image of Spessivtseva in her later years – she lived to the ripe old age of 96 - in which her face with still beautiful and noble features is adorned by her large, live, clever and expressive eyes, is no lesser an experience.

Sponsors of the play:
Ministry of Culture of Beograd
Ministry of Culture of Serbia
Direct Media
Technomania