I’ve been thinking about how to summarise my Belgrade experience, and of course I can only offer a gush of adjectives. Beautiful, fascinating, enlightening. It’s very boring to read the kinds of praises I’d like to lavish on Dah and on Belgrade, so instead, here’s a sort of romantic and reverential look at some of the most memorable moments from the last 3 weeks...
On my 10th day in Serbia we have our day trip to Novi Sad to see the Dah production In/Visible City. It’s a fiercely hot day. The train breaks down on the way back to Belgrade. My housemate Jeff quips, ‘You can take the train out of communism, but you can’t take the communism out of the train.’ As we wait for a new train, we see a solitary turtle poking around in the grass.
On my 12th day in Serbia we go to the Sava Centre for a screening of the documentary of In/Visible City. My fellow international students and I understand so little of the Serbian language that we never quite know the specifics, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We are exposed to a lot of Dah’s work over the 3 weeks, in the form of a lecture by director Dijana, demonstrations and performances by actresses Maja and Sanja, and videos and stories. We are really immersed in the company's rich history, on top of all the things we learn during 'school' time.
After the screening, we go off down to the Sava and dance at one of the clubs that float along its banks. We pass two adjacent restaurants called ‘Argument’ and ‘Dialogue’. Argument is closed!
On my 15th day in Serbia I go on a bus tour with Kym, Izumi and Oana. We ride to Vinča, about half an hour from Belgrade, to visit the archaeological site there. We meet our curator (he’s like a movie character curator – bearded and tanned, utterly enthusiastic and eloquent and charming) who tells us that the site we’re standing on has offered up nine thousand years of history. He leads the group through a garden of apricot trees to the makeshift museum (the structures are all temporary; they’ll be removed to allow further excavation). Most of the materials they have excavated over the last hundred years are in the museum and university in Belgrade, but there is an interesting array of objects on display here. Fishhooks, sewing needles, pots, razors.
Our curator explains that many small figurines were found at the site which show that nine thousand years ago the people here wore woven clothes with v-shaped necks. The prevalence of these female figurines shows a society celebrating fertility. He observes that this was not a matriarchal society, but one where neither sex dominated the other. Matriachy, he states, was a myth invented later on by those who wished to naturalise patriarchy. (We are all quite taken with him by this point.) This society sounds quite lovely actually; Vinča was a trade centre (illustrated by the scattering of ceramics over a large area which seem to be made by the same hand) and its inhabitants behaved peacefully towards each other, as potential customers, rather than as enemies. Our curator said something very simple which, in this context, I somehow found very profound: he described the creative habits of Neolithic man - how the men of Vinča could drill a perfectly circular hold through a stone by passing sand through a reed, and how this kind of creativity saw men going back to their houses at the end of the day feeling satisfied - useful. And so they were peaceful. Many artists and poets and thinkers have expressed this simple truth, but I really found it pertinent when demonstrated by the Neolithic peoples of Europe! How disappointing and inevitable that this peaceful population was assimilated into shrewd, copper-crafting neighbouring communities, and hurried on into the Bronze Age.
(After our curator’s talk we wander back outside and eat a few apricots off the trees.)
Also on my 15th day in Serbia I go with Kym and Izumi to see the Belgrade Philharmonic playing at the Sava Centre, with violinist Stefan Milenkovič and cellist Ani Aznavoorian. They play the Brahms concerto that I listened to over and over in high school when I became a bit obsessed with the cello. There are white roses placed on the arms of each seat.
My 21st day in Serbia is the day before we leave. Our last school exercise is to walk through Kalemegdan, silently. For two hours we wander through the fortress, stopping to admire views of the city, to look at monuments and displays and churches. Midway, we stop and have a picnic under the trees. It's a lovely meditative way to spend our last morning. And in the afternoon,
Now it's my 3rd day in London! I've been hollered at in the flower markets and fed an intense curry in Brick Lane. I congratulate myself on having mastered the tube (next station, hubris), and I've seen tiny Henry Moore bronzes and eaten pavlova at the Tate Modern. It's a far cry from Belgrade but I keep having to stop myself saying 'hvala' (thank you).
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