Jan Fabre, director, choreographer, lecturer, visual artist, scenographer, writer (the order is not important) from Belgium, is a welcome and, one might say, very welcome guest of Belgrade. Like, for example, Roberto Ćuli and Paolo Magglio.
From March 18 to 28, he will come again, as a guest professor of the Institute for Artistic Dance, and for the promotion of the book "From Action to Acting Interpretation - Jan Fabre's Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st Century", published by the Institute for Artistic Dance
For the first time, Jan Fabr came to Belgrade for Bitef, in 1984 with the play "The Power of Theater Folly" and won the only two awards that were awarded that year - the Special Award and the Politika Award.
The next time he came in 2011, again at Bitef but also at the October Salon. His play "Prometheus Landscape II" opened Bitef that year, and at Oktobarac he showed the work "I let myself drain (dwarf)", an installation in which Jovan Popović's painting "Portrait of a man with a fez" from the collection of the National Museum was exhibited. Jan Fabr donated the work to the Cultural Center of Belgrade, the organizer of that art manifestation I am a one-man movement, and thereby initiated the current October Salon collection.
The following year, Fabr came to promote his first "Night Diary 1978-1984", which was published by the Cultural Center of Belgrade.
Then, in 2017, he came to Bitef again, with "Olympus", a play that, like no other, literally changed the perception of a theater play. "Olympus" received the Grand Prix "Mira Trailović" and the Bitef Audience Award.
At the same time, this play was a historic event in the life of live television broadcasts: as probably everyone knows, RTS broadcast the play "Olympus" live, which lasted 24 hours. Unofficially, due to the applause at the end, the performance lasted 25 hours.
During that Bitef, the Cultural Center of Belgrade promoted Fabro's second "Night Diary 1985-1991"
The next arrival, in 2020, had three reasons: the exhibition "Feast of Little Friends" at the National Museum, the premiere of the monodrama "Night Writer" performed by Slobodan Beštić at the National Theater, and the promotion of the third "Night Diary 1992-1998".
This March, Jan Fabre is coming at the invitation of the Institute for Artistic Play.
Aleksandar Ilić, choreographer and professor of the Institute, tells "Vreme" that this latest arrival was in some way conceived back then, four years ago at the Cultural Center, of which he was acting manager at the time, "when the first meeting and acquaintance with the professors of the Institute for artistic game".
He says that Fabre then combined the National Museum, the National Theater and the Cultural Center, and believes that it left an "indelible artistic mark on the year 2020".
He also adds that Fabre had a great influence on the local art scene. "After the performance of the play 'Olympus', a lot has changed in the consciousness of our players, choreographers and performers. We allowed ourselves, following his work, to try to follow what he bequeathed to us that year."
The promotion of the book "From Action to Acting Interpretation - Jan Fabre's Guidelines for the Performer of the 27st Century" is scheduled for March XNUMX at the Institute for Artistic Dance. It will be the fourth book in the ten-year work of the Institute, and it was preceded by the monograph "Après" by Nemanja Maraš, "Labannotation of the base" by Marko Mićić and "Modelling of the pedagogical work of ballet repetiteurs" by Tanja Vujisić Todorovska.
The "Guidelines" promotion will be at the end of ten days of work with students of all levels of the Institute, who will be taught by instructors Stella Hetler and Conor Doherty as part of the "Jan Fabre Teaching Group".
"The book is a guide, not a method, an instruction for stage artists. I don't want its content to become dogma. It was born out of love for performers, the stage, acting, dancing," Jan Fabre said earlier.
