Culture Heals the Hearts, Minds in War-Torn Sarajevo : Arts: Remnants of humanism cling to life and offer escapism to citizens in the besieged city of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Latin strains squeaked out over a battered sound system, pelting out the chorus of “Espagnola,” while a mirrored disco ball reflected fractured red light against a blackened wall. Chic couples in leather and heels pressed up against the stage, straining to get a better look during a moment of escapism that transformed the shabby theater into an oasis of exotic rhythms.

Sonidos Barbaros (Barbarian Sounds) can lay claim to being the only salsa band in Sarajevo, but not the city’s only cultural diversion. Music, art, theater and other remnants of humanism cling to survival, fighting to remain viable amid two years of claustrophobic siege.

Cut off from opportunities, many artists have fled for the safety promised by the West. But those who remain play to audiences starved for something magical amid reality. Those searching to escape--if for but a moment--include Amra and Sida Beganovic. The two sisters are among 200 or so Sarajevans who recently paid three times their average monthly salary to hear Sonidos salsa and dance till the 10 p.m. curfew.

“This shows that you can kill the physical self, but not the spiritual self,” Sida Beganovic said, as her sister nodded effusively. “This shows people can’t be broken.”

Artists here believe their battle throughout Bosnia’s war has been not only to dodge the shelling that killed randomly and the snipers that lurked in the concrete apartment blocks, but to retain the essence of Sarajevo’s spirit that characterized the city before the war.

Nowhere is that spirit more evident than in the collection of streets housing a handful of arts centers that might be dubbed, humbly, the theater district. This area at the center of the city, loosely referred to as the Obala, is a dreary-looking collection of buildings pockmarked by the devastation of mortar shells. Among them is Kamerni Theatre-55, a smallish upstairs artistic mecca, performance center and cafe where the nation’s leading actors--all of them unknown outside of the former Yugoslavia--gather to drink coffee, prepare productions and reminisce about better times.

Actors huddle around small round tables, while news reports from Bosnia’s war fronts blare from the cafe’s sound system. The radio seems to fade and conversations pause, though, when Gradimir Gojer, the theater’s general manger, hustles in. Sitting down heavily, the heavy-set balding director feigned interest in a light brown Nescafe faux espresso, making the best of an imperfect situation. He ticked off KT-55’s accomplishments: nine premiere concerts, eight dramatic premieres, seven art exhibitions, more than 1,100 other performances of various sorts. The value of the theater, in his estimation, could be compared only to that of Sarajevo’s hospitals: “They healed the wounds,” he said, “and we healed the soul.”

Reaching out to audiences also has become a matter of personal survival for many of the artists who work at KT-55, some of whom have turned down chances to escape because they wanted to stay to share their art with their native audience. Performing has become the reason to endure, say artists like Dzevad Sabanagic, the 49-year-old first violin and leader of the theater’s string quartet. Sabanagic knows loss well: Half of his ensemble’s original members died during shelling in the fall of 1992. Mortar attacks nearly took his own life as well. But during the moments of music, the horrors of war dropped away: “Every time I left home, when grenades were falling, I knew that I could die. I always thought when I got to the concert hall that this might be the last time I played. So I thought I’d play with all my heart.”

Sabanagic’s need to express his emotions mirrored the efforts of other artists, some of whom risked their lives to simply display their work. Enes Sivac, 29, and three friends suspended a wire sculpture of a bicyclist over the Miljacka River. The surging current of the river below divides Sarajevo in some places between the Bosnian Serb army and the Muslim-led government forces, and people have come to see the sculpture as a symbol linking those separated by opposing forces.

“They were shooting all day, so (the Bosnian Serb army) probably figured no one would be outside,” Sivac said of the day he erected the work. “But I had to do that more than I had to get water or food.”

Sivac shrugged when asked about the interpretations of his work, saying he intended the cyclist to be a link between water and sky, not a bridge between opposing armies. He liked the tenuousness of the cyclist, comparing him to a human trying to reach his destiny, subject to any strong gusts that might topple him. “It’s destiny,” he said. “At any moment the wind can blow you over, and you are nowhere.”

Sivac said the cyclist searches for equilibrium, but is unstable. “That,” he said, “is what war is like.”

Sarajevans have responded to the courage of Sivac and others by attending any exhibit, any production, any movie--en masse. There is a fever for literature as well, with poets like Ferida Durakovic enjoying a success she never knew before, despite several published volumes.

“For the first time people want to read my poems,” Durakovic said. “It was kind of a pleasant surprise....(But the interest) was a kind of inner resistance to the horrible situation we’ve been through. People are trying to prove themselves to be living and creative persons.”

So intent were Sarajevans to read Durakovic’s work, that strangers have stopped her on the street and begged to borrow copies of her books.

Durakovic and other artists realize, though, that much of the art and culture that has risen from Sarajevo’s destruction would not necessarily be appreciated by outsiders, many of whom might not appreciate their defiant message without the backdrop of ongoing war. But the artists are loathe to criticize the amateurs, noting that the quality works will survive when stability and free market forces return after the war.

Sarajevans don’t believe that real peace is possible, though the city is now suspended in relative calm. The state of neither lasting peace nor constant war continues to strain the imagination of Sarajevans, most of whom scarcely dare make plans for the future. Even if a peace deal were to be signed, artists like Gojer believe that planning and execution for the next stage will be as laborious as performing in the time of war. With so much of Bosnia-Herzegovina destroyed, the daunting prospect of reconstruction seems overshadowed only by the conviction that the maintenance of art in Sarajevo during its worst moments might provide the spiritual underpinnings on which to build the future.

“I wouldn’t say the (arts) are stronger. The war has been hard on the arts. But an actor who has passed through this Golgotha has to be a richer actor,” Gojer said. “This will be a thing that will help us pass the hurdles of the future. Everything we’re building from zero will be hard. We’re building so much from nothing. Even though Bosnia had 1,000 years of tradition, the war has destroyed the cultural infrastructure, so that to revitalize it one can’t expect a quick reincarnation.”

As long as there’s no definite deal for peace, the more difficult it is for younger artists to imagine a future in their native land. Yet some, like the musicians and singers of Sonidos Barbaros, refuse to go, choosing to play to audiences that appreciate their presence rather than escaping to an outside world that will consider them to be but more members of a teeming mass of refugees.

Instead, musicians like Selen Balic of Sonidos have used the war years to grow professionally. Never mind that they’ve often had to work without light or electricity and that one of the bedrooms in the flat where they practice was once blown up by a shell.

“After this war, I’m not afraid of anything except dentists,” said Balic, who struggles on by organizing small concerts and by dreaming of one day playing the ultimate concert with the Gipsy Kings.

“Nothing can ruin our wish to make music,” he said. “Nothing.”