Edina Papo

Edina Papo, born Hadžirović, on 9 April 1958 in Sarajevo.

She was the artistic director of the Sarajevo Ballet.

Since 1975, she worked as a ballet dancer and occasionally a ballet teacher and accompanist of rehearsals at the Sarajevo National Theater.

She, then, went to study in Russia.

In 1987, she graduated in ballet pedagogy and classical ballet methodology at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg in the class of Professor Valentina Vasiljevna Rumjanceva, as the best student of the generation.

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Since 1987, she worked as a ballet teacher at the Elementary Music School 29 Novembar and the Secondary Music School in Sarajevo, where she taught the subjects: Classical Ballet, Historical Dances, Stage Character Dances and Historical Heritage.

↵In 1992, she specialized in choreography at the Rimsky Korsakov State Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

During the same period, she performed the duties of Head of the Ballet, Ballet Master, ballet pedagogue and choreographer at the Brașov Opera and Ballet Theater in Romania.1994.

In 1994, she worked in two companies in Israel as a choreographer of Operete Israelit in Jerusalem, and as a guest-pedagogue in the Kibbutz Ga'aton ballet company in Tel-Aviv.

As a choreographer and pedagogue, she has made great contributions to the redevelopment and renewal of ballet art in post-Bosnian War Sarajevo, that is, since 1996.

She completed her ballet education at Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet and N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg Conservatory in St. Petersburg.

She enriched the repertoire with performances closer to the contemporary trends of modern ballet dance and current European theatre.

She was born in Sarajevo, where she received a ballet education in parallel with high school.

At the age of 16, she was engaged in the Sarajevo National Theater Ballet troop where, as the youngest member of the ensemble, she began performing solo roles.

In 1996, she became a pedagogue, and in 1999 she became the Head of the Sarajevo National Theater Ballet.

From 2003 to 2015, she served as the director of the Sarajevo National Theater Ballet, when the Ballet was transformed into an independent Organizational Unit within the Sarajevo National Theater.

On the occasion of the World Dance Day jubilee, she stated:

"Dance is a much broader concept than what we think. Therefore, the dance is folklore, the dance is also official dances, the dance is contemporary ballet, classical ballet, dance for the alternative ballet scene. The first steps in thinking about art, as well as movement, were all what we call dance today. April 29 is a date that is significant because of the great Jean Georges Noverre, the reformer of ballet art who was the forerunner of the ballet performance that we today call classical ballet, as well as what we perceive in our minds, today's ballet that dates back almost 70 years in BiH as a professional art, as academic art, as something that is part of our everyday life and what is called the National Theater of Sarajevo."

At the 2022 Ballet Fest Sarajevo, Papo authored and organized an exhibition dedicated to Emina Kamberović's life and career.

It was, hosted by Novi Hram Gallery in Sarajevo on 22 September, under the title "Veliki format".