A new ballet project, co-produced by the international festival Music Biennale Zagreb and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, finds its inspiration in the Museum of Broken Relationships, which exhibits objects left behind after romantic breakups. Following an international open call for works on the theme of broken relationships, Music Biennale Zagreb invited composers, while the Zagreb Ballet engaged choreographers, bringing together artists who had never collaborated before but were united by the themes of parting, disintegration, and dissolution. This collaboration resulted in new musical and choreographic pieces, woven into a triple-bill ballet that offers the audience an innovative approach to contemporary ballet and music.
Rafał Ryterski – Alessandro Giaquinto: The Most Familiar Stranger
In the first piece, The Most Familiar Stranger, composer Rafał Ryterski and choreographer Alessandro Giaquinto explore the concept of estrangement. When relationships break down, alienation emerges. What was once familiar changes irreversibly. People who were once close become strangers, and places we once called home no longer feel the same. Estrangement shifts existing relationships and creates new ones. Distance now takes on a tangible, almost physical form—like imagined walls between them and us, or even within ourselves.
Ivan Končić – Pett Clausen-Knight: Flicker Out
A fusion of Ivan Končić’s music and choreography by the British duo Pett Clausen-Knight Dance brings us Flicker Out, a work that focuses on the fleeting moment before finality—the fragile threshold marking the very instant of an ending, where joy and grief merge in a transient surge leading to the inevitability of emotional resolution. Flicker Out stretches the moment in which echoes of memory transform into parallel worlds, as the last bursts of love and loss collide in rapid succession, leaving behind only fragments of light.
Veronika Reutz Drobnić – Takuya Sumitomo: Black Puzzle – Still, I Rise
Young composer Veronika Reutz Drobnić and Takuya Sumitomo, principal dancer of the Zagreb Ballet, now taking on the role of choreographer, have created a piece that uses the metaphor of a black puzzle to examine the relationship between the individual and society. At its core is the dynamic between Haku and society, while simultaneously exploring his internal struggle with his own thoughts and his journey toward self-discovery. Haku has broken his ties with society and become estranged from it. He confronts his hundred thoughts, each one a fragment of his identity. The protagonist of this story strives to piece his puzzle back together in search of personal reconciliation and his place in the world.
