Petricore

Petricore functions as aesthetic balm, social commentary, and bodily meditation in one effective package
Jelena Mihelčić, SPRINGBACK MAGAZINE

Petricore (2025, Zagreb)

Petricore celebrates the power of coming together and the complexity of coexistence. 

Five performers move as one. Gestures that appear simple reveal themselves as acts of endurance, reminders of the body’s limits and possibilities. The performers dissolve into a collective image where the borders of individuality soften. Their movements call forth both the comfort and the unease of belonging: the pull of conformity, the joy of union, the friction of difference. What surfaces is a paradox — a togetherness that never erases uniqueness, and a uniqueness that only becomes visible through the collective.

Petricore calls us to recognise ourselves in others. Like petrichor — the scent of rain on parched earth — the work evokes the renewal that arises when bodies come together, when humanity rediscovers itself through empathy.

TRAILER

Artistic direction of ZPA company: Petra Glad Mažar, Petra Valentić

Public relations: Sara Ivanović

Production: Zagreb Dance Company 

Partners: S’ALA, Zagreb Dance Center, Mediterranean Dance Center

S’ALA Production team: Davide Pisano, Anna Paola Della Chiesa
ZPC Production team: Alexandra Madsen, Josipa Bubaš, Jure Matulić

Financially supported by: City of Zagreb, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, Foundation Kultura nova

Thanks to: Anika Cetina, Katarina Barešić, Valentina Miloš, Vilim Poljanec, Luciana Fracassi, Letizia Valzania, Amedeo Inglese, Saioa Urzelai Hernando, Tonito Solinas, Francesco Perini

“this formally refined and emotionally powerful performance—charged with a strong energetic tension—brings to the stage not only exceptional performative qualities, owed to the remarkable ensemble, but also an equally vivid, articulated thought.”
Jasmina Fučkan, PLESNA SCENA
“It’s easy to dismiss Petricore as ‘nice mainstream theatre’ – and it is nice. Yet there’s something subversive in a performance that quietly places empathy above ego, connection above competition”
Jelena Mihelčić, SPRINGBACK MAGAZINE