THE MOST FAMILIAR STRANGER

ABOUT

The Most Familiar Stranger is a ballet by Rafał Ryterski and Alessandro Giaquinto, commissioned by the 33rd Music Biennale Zagreb and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. The commission was awarded to Rafał Ryterski after he won the international Call for Scores. The world premiere took place on 5 April 2025, opening the Biennale as part of the ballet triple bill Broken Relationships / Prekinute veze.

The work explores the moment when intimacy begins to turn into estrangement. As a relationship breaks down, people known most intimately become elusive, while places once called home lose their meaning. What was familiar does not disappear - it remains in a changed, difficult-to-recognise form. The ballet approaches alienation as a relational, social and internal experience. Distance between people becomes almost material: invisible walls arise between “us” and “them”, but also within the characters themselves.

The music combines orchestral sound with electronics to create an intense, unstable emotional space. It draws on idioms of dance music, transformed anthems of Poland, Italy, Croatia and the European Union, as well as elements of noise, drone and improvisation. Heavy rhythms, distorted sounds and voices accompany a choreography in which a group of people move through connection, separation and transformation. The Most Familiar Stranger asks what happens to identity when a bond breaks - and how, after a separation, relationships with the world, others and oneself are reconfigured.