Following on from their Refugee Week immersive experience at the Salon, MRC,  SARAY Iluminado continues to explore the poetic significance of rivers and waters in Bosnian Sevdah and Sephardic Jewish music, as well as in Nela Trifkovic’s original compositions in their next work Bruised River II . 

This work features multi-lingual traditional and original songs and compositions in Bosnian, Serbian, Macedonian and Judeo-Spanish Ladino languages and multi-lingual poetry and prose.

The music is thematically underpinned by spoken word prose and poetry performances. These works of  prose and poetry  draw  inspiration from a number of thematically-connected

literary masterpieces such as Ivo Andric’s Nobel Prize-winning Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina) and Meša Selimović’s Derviš i smrt (Death and the Dervish,)the  poetry of Bosnian author Mak Dizdar and the Bosnian Sephardic poetess Laura Papo – Bohoreta, as well as the original poems of the Macedonian-Australian author and performer Donna Dimovski-Kantarovski who appears in this show.

This is an intimate, immersive Balkan soiree where culture, music, history and poetry converge to create a poetic cross-cultural exchange that celebrates memories and longings for homeland/s.

Performers:  Nela Trifković, Irine Vela, Kelly Dowall, Ernie Gruner, Donna Dimovski-Kantarovski & Goran Ðurić.