The Croatian football theater MONTAЖ$TROJ stepped onto the stage of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb on January 24th, 2010 – a gilded symbol of high national culture. The football became a metaphor and a fertile framework for juxtaposing national success myths with the contemporary social reality in this dance anti-spectacle.
The axis of the play MY HEART BEATS FOR HER was the reconstruction of the spectacular Croatian victory over England, resulting in 3:2 at the Wembley Stadium on November 21st, 2007. In this reconstruction, the heroes of this most important secondary issue in the world aren’t footballers but – women. In the first halftime, eleven young dancers simulated through choreography the movements of Croatian team members, attempting to revive the national euphoria linked with football. In the second halftime, the places of the dancers were taken over by 11 women from the unemployment bureau. The unemployed women in Croatian team jerseys represented themselves, that it, they spoke about their situation in the labor market, portraying many more reasons in favor of national shame, than national pride dictated by successes in football. It is the authentic experience of unemployed women that points towards the spuriousness of the theater and its impotence before social insensitivity, crude capitalism, gender inequality and the dizzying number of people unemployed in Croatia.
