Following her successful interpretation of the one-act ballet The Firebird in an evening dedicated to Igor Stravinsky, the award-winning and acclaimed choreographer Maša Kolar will bring to the stage a new choreographic interpretation of two works, The Gingerbread Heart and Nonice, which fuse Croatian tradition with contemporary expression.
The Gingerbread Heart premiered on 17 June 1924 at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Created in collaboration between composer Krešimir Baranović and choreographer Margarita Froman, prima ballerina of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and a member of the Ballets Russes, the work holds a particularly important place in the history of Croatian ballet. It is one of the early examples of so-called national ballets created during the formative period of dance’s professionalisation as an autonomous art form, expressed through music, movement, visual design and themes rooted in Croatian folk heritage. The ballet’s action unfolds in a space between reality and dream, where the appearance of an enchanted gingerbread heart sets in motion a series of unusual events. On the stage of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, as well as in many other theatres across the region, The Gingerbread Heart remained in the repertoire for almost sixty-four years. In the 2026/2027 season, this seminal original work of Croatian ballet, which has left a lasting mark on its history, will return to the Zagreb stage.
In Nonice, set to music by Tena Novak Vincek, choreographer Maša Kolar portrays the everyday lives of women from Croatia’s coastal regions through gesture and sharply articulated physical expression, revealing both the hardships of their daily existence and the resilient spirit that sustains them. Through the rhythms of work, small rituals and inevitable gossip, the performance evokes the weight of their lives, but also a humour imbued with irony. The lives of these women, in which tragedy and joy are inextricably intertwined, open up a stage world filled with warmth, humour and vitality.
These two ballets bring to life Croatian traditions from different temporal and aesthetic perspectives, not as a reconstruction of the past, but as its contemporary, living resonance.
