Events

Choreography and performance: Anton Ovchinnikov

Duration: 45 min.

Location: @Culture Factory (Bangų g. 5A, Klaipėda)

Classical ballet is one of Russia's main cultural exports and one of the symbols of its culture abroad. Drawing on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, The Beauty of the Beast invites us to view Russian ballet as an aestheticized form of violence against humans and the body.

Today, as the Russian army destroys Ukrainian cities and their inhabitants, inhumanity and destruction are becoming the new symbols of Russia. How might this metamorphosis change attitudes toward traditional classical ballet? Can it still serve as a cover for the illegitimacy, anti-humanism, and imperial habits of the Russian elite? How might war change attitudes toward ballet, which has become the main glossy cover for Russian art exports?

The performance offers a new, dystopian vision of what a traditional classical ballet technique class might look like in a country where the entire cultural industry supports the military industry and is subject to state ideology and propaganda.

The performance is based on Anton Ovchinnikov's poem "The New Russian Ballet," written at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, specifically on March 31, 2022.

Anton Ovchinnikov is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural manager. He works as a choreographer, performer, composer, lecturer, and organizer of the annual international dance festival Zelyonka Space UP in Kiev. Since 2008, he has been the artistic director of the dance organization Black O!Range, recognized as one of the most original dance projects in Ukraine.  

Between 2016 and 2021, he presented several solo performances and created five interdisciplinary projects. In 2017, he was awarded a scholarship for a CEC Artslink residency in the US. Between 2018 and 2019, he was an expert for the Ukrainian Cultural Council.

In 2015, A. Ovchinnikov founded and became the chairman of the All-Ukrainian Association "Contemporary Dance Platform." The main goals of the association are to support young Ukrainian choreographers, integrate contemporary dance into Ukrainian cultural life, and establish a national contemporary dance center. Since 2022, the association has been participating in two international projects: 1) "Let the Body Speak" – an ongoing collection of short dance films and videos created by Ukrainian choreographers during the war years, as well as an educational program developed in collaboration with the British Dance Centre; 2) "The Living Archive Ukraine" – a virtual professional development and creative program based on Wayne McGregor AI. Soma – the world's first machine learning choreographic tool, created specifically for McGregor by Google's Arts and Culture Lab.