The most beautiful performance in the world. A bullring turned into a circus, into an illusionary world where everything is possible.
Lilia Solórzano, “El Nacional”, 1993. Mexico City, Mexico.

With each new performance Pandur poses a new question. “Carmen” deals with history; however, not with the history of collective struggle and madness, but with the history woven of the brittle web of dreams, the history of recollections and imprints on our genetic code.
Anna Luisa Marre, “Il Giornale”, 1993. Milan, Italy.

The set design by Marko Japelj is composed of two well discernible parts; the first is made of sand and strongly evokes surrealism, the other is marked by a movable wall, in the intestines of which many dreams and transformations are hidden. A number of superb actors, excellent dancers, and Carmen, the beautiful and excellent Ksenija Misic, “young, well-built, with enormous eyes”, as if Mérimée had chosen her himself.
Olga Harmony, “La Jornada”, 1993. Guanajuato, Mexico.

The performance is a new apprehension of Carmen — as the archetype of seduction, élan vital, capable of evoking both emotion and awareness, light and darkness.
Magda Poli, “Corriere della Sera”, 1993. Milan, Italy.

In only a few minutes the stage is transformed and we find ourselves in front of the Wall of Desire: nostalgia and passion... “An afternoon at the Brink of European History” unites dramas and myths of different cinematographic, artistic, and musical versions, including Bizet, Borges, Brando, Buñuel, Callas, Camus, Caravaggio, Caruso, Cervantes, Dalí, Davis, De Mille, Goya, Halevy, Lorca, Lumière, Marquez, Meilhac, Mérimée, Milton, Negri, and Valentino. It is however not a plagiary but an inspiration; a manner of finding new ways, new interpretations and historical patterns relating to such a complex, contradictory, real and unreal, personality...
Elena Matadamas, “El Universal”, 1993. Mexico City, Mexico.

Pandur’s theatre is a magnificent blend of classical works of world literature and the innovative elements of contemporary art; to him the theatre of the end of the millennium should “establish the theatrical world as a space within which past theatrical and scenic experiences are synthesized to create new images marked by the uniqueness of the director’s wizardry.”
Carlos Martinez Renteria, “El Universal”, 1993. Guanajuato, Mexico.

Carmen stands for the journeys of all cultural bastards trying to establish their own identity somewhere between paradise and apocalypse. “Carmen” represents the possibility of our communication with a constant feeling of terror, war, fear, hope; with the brutality of history which appears to be disregarding the natural order of things.
Marina Grzinic, “Maska”, 1992. Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Initially wrapped in the red clothes of Love being woven by vestals, the fantastic figure of Carmen, played by Ksenija Misic, enters the real world charged with Andalusian fever and constant singing of cicadas, coarseness, savageness, Dionisian dance, ritual magic, and the search for the goddess Kali...
Ignacija Fridl, “Slovenec”, 1992. Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The blood of life is mixed with the sand of death when at five in the afternoon the elegant matadors are confronted with their freedom — death.

John Maxim, Finfat News Service, 1993. Mexico City, Mexico.

A corrida in the lost paradise. The Carmen-myth as a dazzling, fascinating world of modernistic images.
Horst Ogris, “Der Standard”, 1992. Vienna, Austria.

Although the performance keeps persuading us that the world is both cruel, unjust and terrifying as well as dynamic, ironic and even enjoyable, its dramatic action is developed in an oneiric continuum of time-space. It is a pure, inspiring, meaningful, deep, challenging, witty and entirely hypnotic theatre. In the world of Carmen the past, the present, and the future are made one; this demonstrates Pandur’s special gift for showing magical, unrealistic events in the realistic manner. As the title of one of Calderon de la Barca’s masterpieces “La vida es sueño” suggests, the dreams experienced on the stage of life are cruel, surprising, erotic and statically tragic.
John Maxim, Finfat News Service, 1993. Mexico City, Mexico.