On the big stage of the Croatian National Theater Split on Saturday, June 13, the first performance of the ballet play “The Fifth Element”, a new project of the Ballet Studio of the Croatian National Theater Split, was held. The play is set to music Joško Koludrovićwhile he signs the direction and choreography Marijana Marević Muslim. After the premiere performance, which delighted the audience, large and small, there will be two more performances, on Monday and Tuesday, June 15 and 16, in the Split Theater. It would be a shame to miss it.
Marijana Marević Muslim designed the play as a reflection on the modern world in which the accelerated pace of life and digital reality increasingly distance people from true values. She placed a little girl in the center of the story Sarathrough whose growing up and life challenges the audience follows the symbolism of water, earth, air and fire and the search for balance. As the author points out, love and truth represent the fifth element, which connects all four fundamental elements and returns man to himself.
“The Fifth Element” brings a story set in a modern world characterized by an accelerated pace of life, digital reality and an increasingly pronounced emotional distance between people. Through family relationships, the play explores the conflict between good and evil, internal struggles that shape a person and the search for balance, while at the center of the story is love as a symbolic fifth element that connects, heals and restores lost togetherness.
Through the symbolism of water, earth, air and fire, the play builds a path towards wisdom, trust, loyalty and creativity, talking about the challenges of modern society and relationships between people.
The author of the music, Joško Koludrović, points out that the idea for the ballet began even before the formal collaboration with the theater.
– I started working on this ballet independently, before there was a formal agreement with the theater. I had the need to start building musical material that could carry a contemporary ballet story. Only when I met the choreographer Marijana Marević Muslim, that idea took its concrete form because she had the idea for the synopsis “The Fifth Element” and that’s when the formal collaboration began – said Koludrović.
Challenge
He added that composing a full-length ballet was a special challenge for him because the music in a ballet must convey the story without the help of words.
– In ballet, the situation is different. The music often has to come before the choreography, or at least before its final form. This means that the composer must imagine in advance the atmosphere of the play that does not yet exist in the space, its internal tension, dramaturgical arc and energy changes – he said.
Speaking about the symbolism of the four elements, he pointed out that he did not see them as literal representations of natural forces.
– I didn’t understand the four elements just as illustrative images, but as different internal states. I was more interested in what each element means dramaturgically and emotionally – he explained.
Koludrović believes that precisely the combination of contemporary themes and classical ballet expression can bring this art closer to the younger generations.
– The digital world, family relationships, the search for balance, the need for wisdom and unity are topics that young people can understand because they live them. If ballet manages to touch them not only aesthetically, but also emotionally, then there is a chance that they will not experience it as something distant or museum-like, but as living art – he concluded.
