"COVID changed not simply our understanding of shelter, but of ourselves."

How do artists from two nations come together to share through art the transformations in us, in our understanding, and in our humanity brought by the last two years? 

That's SHELTER: SERBIA in partnership with Una Saga Serbica 

For all that COVID did to separate us -- not simply from the world but from each other -- it also brought us together.

As people who often have known little about each other, the coming together of 30 Serbian and five American artists in Sklonitze (Shelter) has revealed what we long believed -- that COVID and its impacts remind us that we are all simply people -- people who share dreams, aspirations, fears and hopes.    

Check out this amazing work by our partner, Una Saga Serbica 

Through the vision of three Serbian and four American choreographers, a Serbian composer and the storytelling of dozens, Sklonitze takes the audience on a journey not just through life but through the many rooms, garages, studios and walkways of the Una Saga Serbica complex. Far from being viewers, they are fellow wanderers on this journey that has changed us all.  

Through the support of the Embassy of the United States, Belgrade, and the partnership of Una Saga Serbica, SHELTER is a chance to find anew each other and be reminded that, in the end, we are all a part of the same pathways.      

SEVEN DAYS TO CREATE A TALE OF THE JOURNEY    

While it could as easily take a year, the opportunity must be realized in just a week - from start to finish .

THREE ACTS

In January 2020, despite the first alarms ringing out of China, we were all headlong into our lives and our own journies. That's how we begin -- in the controlled chaos of rehearsal, with an intimate audience of 60 watching.        

As it did in life, so it does on stage -- everything simply stops, and we retreat. Full theaters and studios go dark. And as the audience makes its way from theater to garage to sidewalk to the looking glass of our kitchens, home offices and even, sometimes, bedrooms -- the sanctuary we all took for granted becomes both a place of confinement and of inspection (and introspection).

Finally, though, we are brought back to the room we began in, but a room transformed from open walls and mirrors to the Black Box where only what you are given to see can be seen. In the end, though, we find a place to come out on the other side -- to find, again, shelter.