28-5-11
Hotel Royal, Belgrade
Today we spent our time at DAH working with Dijana. We spent the vast majority of our time doing drum work. Dijana focused on what she calls “layers of attention.” On stage, an actor must be aware of many things while not letting any of that interfere with the perfect execution of their performance. In order to train this, we did drum work while Djana continued to add more and more things to what we needed to remember and perform such as, “Be like a giant,” “Be like a butterfly,” “Be like cold molasses,” and so forth. Sometime she would remove or replace layers, but more often than not she would just add more layers.
In the afternoon we did some vocal work. Dijana had us imagine the sounds of different animals or personae, such as dogs, cats, roosters, or operatic baritones. What sounds do they make, what’s their tempo, what’s their tone? She then had us speak our dialogue as if we were the animal/personae and slowly refine it to intelligible speech. We repeated the exercise for each animal/personae with the same piece of dialogue and observed the different changes we noticed.
That afternoon Jugi talked us through DAH’s history of performances, from their debut performance of This Babylonian Confusion in the fountain of Republic Square up through the process of creating their newest piece, The Nastasijevića Code.
After we returned to the hotel, I had planned to get some food and head to Kalemegdan to take some more photos and then head back to Mikser but the weather decided it didn’t want to comply. It was a deluge. Keegan, Lucas, and I found some food instead. After some time, decided the rain was lightening so we should figure out something to do. We decided to find a club, maybe Freestyler again, and have a good night before the trip to Novi Sad in the morning. We decided to attempt to find Tube, which was supposedly just a couple blocks away.
Sam and Lynnette decided to join us on our trip – Sam especially because she had decided against Freestyler with us two nights before planning to “wait for the people not doing the DAH workshops…so that we can stay out later.” We find Tube, a sign on the door says the club doesn’t open until 11:30p. We’re right next to a rakija bar we’ve been meaning to try, so we decided to go there and wait until the club opened.
The first thing I noticed is that the bar appeared even smaller from the inside than it did from the outside. There were no open tables, but there were two two-person ledges available that we decided to grab. The bartender came over to take our orders and we were all impressed by his firm, fluent control of the English language. He described the varieties of rakija available – I just told him to bring me his favorite. He ended up bringing a glass of pear-flavored rakija that was superb – as good as what we had at Znak Pitanja, though very much a different brand. With your order, they also provided a glass of water and a small set of hor d’ourves that consisted of a couple olives, a bit of tomato, some cheese, and a piece of smoked meat. Fantastic. I would highly recommend the bar to any interested parties in Belgrade.
Around 11:45 or midnight, we left the Bar and headed towards the Tube. It was still closed. Lucas remembered hearing or reading somewhere that it was under renovations, though we thought it wouldn’t be recommended if it were…we were wrong. C’est la vie. We decided to check Club Anderground again before heading towards Freestyler. We walked to Anderground and this time actually ended up finding the entrance, however there was a major load-in going on and the club wasn’t going to be open that night…or any other that week. Dammit. Eh, ah well. We continued our trek towards down towards the Sava riverside, following it to a bridge to New Belgrade.
As we were crossing the bridge, we started seeing flashing yellow lights coming from what we had thought was a riverboat soccer field. As we got about a fourth of the way across the bridge, we started hearing a heavy base beat too… Once we came abreast with the boat, we saw swarms of people inside dancing while more and more kept streaming in. We walked down the steps to the riverside terrace and briefly discussed what we wanted to do: This or Freestyler? We figured we probably couldn’t get into Freestyler, but Lucas was still determined to try.
We headed south along the river towards Freestyler and soon enough the bass beat dropped off and Freestyler and Sound’s competing sound systems drifted towards our ears. There was a small line outside of Freestyler, but nothing large. Lucas sauntered up to the security crew to try and get in. They asked if he had a reservation tonight. Upon learning that he did not, they turned him away. Apparently tonight was reservations only. Damn.
So we went next door to Sound. As we walked into the bar, a pink glimmer of light caught my eye and caused me to look ceilingward. Suspended twenty or more feet in the air was a giant chandelier made of empty bottles of Absolut Vodka lit from above with a hot pink. Across the rest of the room was green and pink lighting with some laser shows and a few rotating gobos – nothing nearly as awesome as Freestyler was. The music was softer and had a much smaller base beat. People weren’t really dancing and the bar wasn’t very crowded either. Freestyler also employed a live DJ – I’m pretty sure that Sound did not, though I couldn’t guarantee it without going more than that one night.
We ordered one round and before me and Lucas were even halfway done Sam and Lynnette decided they didn’t like the club and were heading back to Hotel Royal. We left after we finished our round – our table was apparently reserved anyway, though they didn’t bother to tell us until the other party showed up…lame. We walked out and headed north back along the riverside, away Freestyler and Sound.
We got back to the riverside soccer field and the party was still bumping. Hell, it was going stronger than it had been before, though people were no longer streaming in. We went up to the “security” – basically two guys standing at the entrance – and asked them if they knew English and could tell us what was going down inside. We were told it was a house concert and the cover charge was a thousand dinar. We walked away – Keegan didn’t have the dinar on her to cover it – while Lucas continued to bemoan his desire to dance all night and his frustration that he couldn’t get into Freestyler. When we got to the terrace area, stopped walking and told Lucas it was his choice if we spent the night dancing here or we could go back to the hotel. He wouldn’t make up his mind. He kept looking north, under the bridge, towards Kalemegdan and back at the boat. Kalemegdan. The boat. Kalemegdan. The boat. Kalemegdan. The Boat. Kalem – I got fed up and pushed him towards the entrance, all the while telling Keegan I could cover her tonight if she pay me tomorrow and loan me a thousand dinar until we got back to the States.
We get up there, pay our fees, and walk in to a decent DJ. We grabbed a couple beers and headed out to the dance floor. While we started movin’ and groovin’ – just a little bit ‘cause we had drinks – the DJ stopped his set and announced the next band coming onstage – Access, I believe, was their name. At some point during their show they asked if anyone could speak Romanian. A couple hand shot up, and they had some basic dialogue before breaking into…Ma-di-ya-hee, ma-di-ya-hoo, ma-di-ya-ha, ma-di-ya-ahh-ahh! The Numa Numa song as it’s generally known to Americans. Everyone in the crowd started dancing and jumping and singing along. When they completed the finale, the only thing the lead said was, “Tonight….You all speak Romanian!” It was hilarious.
After the band left, I headed towards the John…probably bad choice – it was packed. I managed to get in line for the first stall, but attempted to keep the doorway open (there was a guy in front of me on the other side of the door). As soon as he went in, two young girls slipped into his place… Whatever, I can wait. He took forever, and when he got out they slipped in together. I stepped quickly to the other side of the door so that I wouldn’t lose my spot. A man standing in line for the next stall leaned in and said something quickly in Serbian. I stopped him and said I didn’t speak Serbian, asking if he spoke English. He did. He leaned over again and said, “Is there anything worse than two girls in a stall together?” Quick on my toes, I responded, “Yeah, three!” He laughed as he pulled away.
About that time an event employee laid a hand on my shoulder and asked if I could let another lady go ahead of me…I didn’t hear fully what he said, he was a little ways away. Like any old sucker I said yes…I didn’t want to get kicked our or anything. When the other girls were done, she went in and quickly walked back out. As she walked by, she mentioned that there wasn’t any more toilet paper. Luckily I didn’t need any.
I get back to Lucas and Keegan about the time the next DJ walks on stage. Lo-and-behold, guess who? The escorted lady from the Bathroom. She started spinning discs and pumping beats – it was great! She started around 1:30a and kept on playing straight through when we left around 3:30a. Around that time, the party was starting to die – though the hardcore guys and gals were still going strong. By the time we got back to the hotel, we all wanted to go back to the party. Keegan and Lucas laid down before me – out instantly. I followed soon after to the same speedy results.
