The dance performance SAMPLE is part of a multimedia project CROATIAN CREATION (Croatian Creation) legitimizing MONTAЖ$TROJ as an originally Croatian quality product. It premiered December 31st, 2011 and again on January 1st, 2012 as a reward for the visitors-witnesses who gave their statements at the interactive exhibition.
Starting with the quoting method in which it integrates completely intimate stage actions, the performance SAMPLE questions the concept of "genuineness" in art, as well as the issue of evaluating a work of art. The musical background of the performance played from a cellular phone is an album by a mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli named Sacrificium. The album consists of arias composed in the baroque ere when women were not allowed to perform in theaters – which is why young boys were castrated in order to retain their high, feminine voices. The phenomenon of sacrificing oneself for art is repeated in the performance SAMPLE by sacrificing the performer’s body. Her body becomes the "sample" that tests the delineation between public and private, real and fictional in a performance. Her body is a "display" of yearnings, desires and fears present every day, but never exposed to public scrutiny. Simultaneously dancing and drinking alcohol, the performer blurs the lines between representation and uncontrolled effects of personal experimentation. This dark "reality check" presents the performer’s loss of control, enabling the audience to recognize their own fragility or their own moments of defeat.
