Future dancers on their view of today.
The idea that dancers and choreographers are thinking and reflecting subjects is not new, but dance hierarchies of the prima and the corps de ballet, the genius creator and silent performer nurtured by classical ballet, still dominate in Russia. Every initiative aimed at changing this paradigm and creating a new ethics of art production is important and of interest to curators as well as to the public. One such initiative is the MA program Art Practices in Contemporary Dance (2019-2021) at Vaganova Academy, which aims to create a space for the choreographer and the performer to rethink their practice as artists and as active members of contemporary society and culture with a clear point of view. One of the few dance programs in Russia that is not built around a single master, it is curated by Nina Gasteva, Tatyana Gordeeva, and Aleksandr Lyubashkin and taught by the Academy staff and invited lecturers who shape the Russian contemporary dance scene today: Aleksandr Pepelyaev, Andrey Andrianov, Aleksandra Konnikova, Albert Alberts, Ilya Belenkov, Fyodor Nedotko, Anna Kravchenko, Ballet Moscow director Elena Tupylseva, as well as art curator Anastasia Kotylyova, dance curator Anastasia Proshutinskaya, poet and art theorist Roman Osminkin, and philosopher Aleksandr Montlevich.
For eighteen months, eleven students from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Ivanovo, Simferopol, and Nizhny Novgorod worked in the laboratory that combined theory and practice with over twenty teachers, who offered them classes in professional and research disciplines for choreography artists.
In the run-up to the graduation exams, the Masters-to-be Ekaterina Galanova, Alevtina Gruntovskaya, Darya Zinovyeva, Marina Izhetskaya, Aleksandras Krifaridi, Elizaveta Nazarova, Darya Nikheyma-Kutuzova, Denis Okhotnikov, Anastasia Rebkalo, Ivan Sachkov, and Anastasia Soboleva will speak about their research and theoretical work and discuss why theory for a contemporary dance artist is no less important than practice.
The meeting will precede the performances on June 12 at ZIL Transformer Hall.
It will be moderated by contemporary dance curator Anastasia Proshutinskaya.