July 3, Monday at 8:00 pm
Croatian National Theatre, Trg maršala Tita 15


The work of the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker is highly regarded throughout Europe, and her productions in Germany have been particularly well received. The football-dance production Maracanã – named after the famous football stadium in Rio – is the culmination of her longstanding collaboration with the Hamburg Kampnagel. It was financed by the German government as part of the cultural programme to accompany the World Cup.

Acrobatics, energy and dynamics distinguish her choreography, which plays with expectations of the spectators in an amazing way, in defiance of the laws of gravity. In Maracanã, German and Brazilian dancers turn the stage into a football field, and the audience into a cheering cauldron.

Football is the subject, but also the form of the production. 
The view of the empty stage recalls stadium ecstasy: the white lines mark the limits of the field, one half of it protruding into the audience at an angle of 90 degrees. The performers soar suspended by wires descending from the stage horizon, climb the walls like flies, turning even the air into a football field. The stage design changes perspectives, transforming the horizontal field into a vertical one. The strangely elegiac score enhances the drama of the football event.

Dance and football are not opposites. To dance football – this is what the South American football stars do occasionally, as do the proper dancers. The dancers forced by playful or football-crazed choreographers to explore the parallels and coinciding of passions. That is what Xavier Le Roy did in E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S., or Thomas Lehmen in his stage reconstruction of the playing of Borussia Dortmund, or Jo Strómgens in A Dance Tribute to the Art of Football.

In an attempt to interpret football as dance, Colker makes use of humour and competitive drive to give free reign to the unhinged and the erratic. Human bodies roll across the stage like footballs, the goalies slide as if moved by some invisible hand. She makes football feminine, with dancers clad in specially designed low-cut jumpsuits, putting her faith in the Brazilian sex-appeal. The choreography rings changes on spectator's sports-fan routines and rituals in a spectacular manner, on the diagrams of the dynamics of players' movement, above all the ones we're familiar with from the experience football. The intersection of football and dance is found to be the admixture of adrenalin and inspiration. The performers of Maracanã certainly do not lack strength and sacrifice. In the stadium, football is often brutal, hard-hitting, and ferocious. But Maracanã knows only levity, elegance, and style.

Before she discovered dance, Deborah Colker was a professional volleyball player, read psychology at the university and performed as a concert pianist. In 1994 she founded the Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker. Her highly dynamic choreographies, such as Rota, Casa or 4 por 4, drive dance movement to the edge of acrobatic extravaganza, to the limits of resilience and gravity.