The coreodrama "My town" had the first night on June 18th, 1993 on the occasion of
the 400th anniversary of the battle at Sisak, that was very important in the history of middle Europe, as it was here that the raiding of the Turks towards the West was stopped. And now the same situation is repeating. Destruction is present again.
Life doesn't run peacefully any more unlike the river Kupa through the town of Sisak and this is the basic motif that stimulated Jasminka Petek-Krapljan to relize this coreodrama. "My town" is personal seeing of millenary continuance of the town Sisak.
The play starts with the poem in prose "The shadow" by A.G.Mato�, the only textual element emphasizing the basic idea of the coreodrama - the counterpoint of intimacy and inevitability of history; becose: "the shadow is the soft pillow of light" and it can become light itself. With the text the first scene opens, the scene of middle class idyil by the river which is based on the well known Serrault's picture "At the bathing place", from which the love story containing the elements of contemporary and past emerges gradually.
The next scene is the group scene which coreographycally and auditively evokes primitive, primeval elements which always appear in the situations of war and decay.
The impossibility of idyil and beauty results in its contrariety - madness and destruction.
Every day beauty is not possible any more and the town is surrendered to contingency.
The final scene is also the group scene in which Roman men and women appear dancing
their dance to modern music. The collision of modern and past can be conceived as mocking of conceiving the past as idyllic paysage of our childhood, but also as the reminiscence of far and famous Siscia.
The coreographer Jasminka Petek-Krapljan is a representative of the explicit intimatistic trend in modern ballet. By the achieved balance of solo parts and group scenes the coreodrama "My town" is one in the series of works that remains on the line of recognizable expression arising from deep intimate consideration of the reality, life and art.
Dubravko Vencl
