Dorcol Plac Becomes a Concert Hall for BupBap Festival

Tomorrow an entirely different space opens in Belgrade: Dorcol Plac. In the foyer of the Belgrade Philharmonic, the room where audiences usually wait to enter the main hall, violinist Tijana Milosevic announced today the festival that will take it over. BupBap, a festival of the Belgrade Art Platform, begins on September 29 at 8 PM with the concert performance “Between Worlds,” a blend of music, theater, dance and video art, and runs through October 15 across several locations in the city.

Milosevic wrote the concept and plays the violin herself, Nikola Zavisic directs, and she is joined on stage by Mirjana Neskovic, Boris Brezovac, Nevena Kostic, Nemanja Stankovic, Srdjan Sretenovic, Ognjen Popovic and Dejan Sinadinovic, while the dance segment is carried by Una Djelosevic, Jelena Loncar and Jaksa Filipovac. The opening also carries a world premiere: a piece that Tanjug and Press.rs list under the title “Melody of Acceptance” and the portal Dan u Beogradu as “Melodies of Acceptance.” Singular or plural aside, it is a new composition by Jug Markovic, written specifically for the occasion.

Markovic is a composer whose career has for some time run mostly through Germany, and that is the first thing Milosevic mentions when introducing him.

“Markovic works a lot, he’s focused on Germany and has built an enviable career there, and for this occasion he created a bridge between Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night and Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, composing a piece for violin, piano and cello,” Milosevic said, standing in the philharmonic’s foyer as the announcement for the next concert echoed behind her.

Why Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Specifically?

The pairing Markovic chose as his foundation is not a random pick. Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale are each, in their own way, works that broke what was then understood as chamber music at the moment they were written: one a string sextet that sounds like an orchestra, the other a theater piece built around just seven instruments. That a young composer today builds a bridge between the two says more about how BupBap positions itself than any line in a press release: the festival does not run from the early twentieth century canon, it uses it as a springboard for something new instead of treating it as a museum piece.

That is also a risk. A festival that builds its opening around a fusion of canonical reference and a new commission has to deliver both, the reference and the commission, not just the announcement that they exist. Judging by the lineup, which puts strings, piano and a dance ensemble on the same stage, the ambition is clear. Whether the performance actually lives up to that promise will only be shown by the evening itself at Dorcol Plac.

The rest of the program shows that BupBap does not stay in one register:

• October 7 at 8 PM, Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Baroque Night,” countertenor Vojtech Pelka and conductor Srboljub Dinic perform Handel, Porpora and Broschi
• October 11 at 8 PM, Belgrade Philharmonic hall: “Synergy,” conductor Vuk Volkov Popovic, double bassist Strahinja Mitrovic, cellist Dragan Suzuki Djordjevic and the ensemble “Arco vivo”
• October 13 at 8 PM, Zappa Baza: the program “Leap,” marking 100 years since the births of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, performed by the jazz octet of the Faculty of Music
• October 14 at 8 PM, Balkan cinema: “Sound Threads,” Sara Fotros on daf, Irina Decermic on piano and Janis Psalidakos on vocals, joined by guest flutist Strahinja Radoicic
• October 15 at 7 PM, DIM on Cetinjska 15: the closing night, with a lecture by psychiatrist Dr. Aleksandra Damjanovic on rave culture followed by a set from Ulises 4000 and Nemanja Vanovic

The range from a baroque chapel to a rave set inside the same festival is, admittedly, closer to a betting pool than a curatorial thesis, but that ease, letting Handel and Coltrane share a program without one needing to apologize for the other, is exactly what sets BupBap apart from Belgrade’s stiffer classical music events. Tickets for tomorrow’s opening are on sale through ddtickets.rs, and the rest of the festival can be followed through its locations, which are themselves part of the message: a philharmonic, a cathedral, a jazz club and a rave space were not chosen at random, they form a map of the city BupBap wants to connect.