Ukraine Platform

May 2 & 3

May 2, Arts Printing House, 18:00

Violetta Matyushenko – ONE MORE STEP (duration: 47 min.)

What is behind your change? How did you get here? Were you alone?

A reflection work on the theme of human transformation. About the causes and people that drive us to change. “Our history, it’s not just us, it’s thousands of people who brought us to this point, the steps of our parents and grandparents, the steps beside us, and the steps of us in the future. Thousands of people manifest in us, and we manifest in them. So how do you change the place you are in? Just take one step”.

 

May 2, Arts Printing House, 19:30

Bohdan Polishchuk – DANSE MACABRE. IMMORTAL DANCE (duration: 30 min.)

We offer intellectual, refined and highly visual dance performance which is at the same time relevant and conceptual. After all, the audience will read not only the contemporary expressive movements but also the underlying contents, references and contexts. The shared vision of the director and the choreographer is an appeal not only to frank, provocative theater, but also to visual, aesthetic theater. Combinations of opposite, contrasting categories works for maximum expressiveness.

Nudity, which fits as much as possible to emphasize the movement, leaves visible every micro movement of the body, emphasizes its plasticity and nature, at the same time acquires a certain decorativeness, colorfulness and a new expressiveness that can only arise from the processing of nature by human hands. 

A girl with a scythe certainly evokes powerful and recognizable associations. However, her nudity will make this image wider and more universal. You will see both Death and the one who faces it. You will see outrageous brutality and insecurity. Thirty minutes of scythe dance. Thirty minutes of the dance of death. Dance of life.

Yana Reutova  TOGETHER ALONE (duration: 25 min.)

Chornomorsk, Odesa, Lviv, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhia… cities on the map of Ukraine that the dancers left in search of safety in the EU after the war broke out. Their stories are different, but they have one thing in common: they all fled from an occupied country and are confronted daily with the trauma, uncertainty and fear that comes with being a refugee in a foreign land.

Five female Ukrainian dancers, torn from their homes, are here and now. Each for herself and yet together. They are kept above water by their creativity, the ability to create and the opportunity to find a new community – an artistic family.

At the same time, Together Alone brings closer the work of other Ukrainian artists. The production is inspired by Anton Ovchinnikov’s verses written during the war in Kyiv and is accompanied by the music of the Canadian-based Ukrainian radical anti-Putin band Balaklava Blues. Tomáš Kerle took care of fine-tuning the sound atmosphere.

 

May 3, Arts Printing House

17:00 

Anton Ovchinnikov – BEAUTY OF THE BEAST (duration: 35 min.)

Russian classical ballet today is one of the main products of Russian cultural export and one of the symbols of Russian art and culture outside of Russia. The performance “Beauty of the Beast” suggests looking at classical Russian ballet as an aestheticized form of violence against a person and over the body.

Today, when the Russian army destroys cities and the population of Ukraine, inhumanity and destruction become new symbols of Russia. How can this metamorphosis change the view of Russian classical ballet? Can it still be a cover for the lawlessness, anti-humanism and imperial habits of the Russian elite? How the war could change the perception of ballet as an art form that is deeply rooted in European culture but which has become a mainstay and glossy cover of Russian art for export?

The performance offers a new utopian vision of what a traditional classical ballet class might look like in a country where the entire cultural industry works to support the military-industrial complex and is subject to state ideology and propaganda.

The performance is based on the poem “New Russian Ballet” by Anton Ovchinnikov, which was written at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, namely on March 31, 2022.

18:00

Marharyta Slyzska (Rita Lira) – THE WAY FROM / TO (duration: 55 min.)

Solo performance reflecting the experiences of Ukrainian people since February 24.

“Is there an instruction on how to abandon your whole life and leave?  Suddenly. How to pack a suitcase when you don’t know where and how long you are going for. Because you are not going TO, but FROM”.

Director and performer, Rita Lira, who was forced to move from Ukraine, created a performance based on interviews from real people who are from or have been to the deoccupied territories after the invasion of russian soldiers. The majority of the sounds for this performance are documentary recordings.

Rita recorded on her phone almost everything that happened around her during her stay in Ukraine in the first days of the invasion. All music for this performance was created without the use of professional equipment or studios. Composer Maryana Savchenko recorded vocals for a choir in a hotel bathroom in China. Singer Pavlo Moskalenko recorded his vocals on a telephone recorder in Ukraine.

The movement of the performance is always in a free form, which makes each showing of this performance unique. Rita decided not to work with exact choreography because this performance is not about beautiful dance. “This is a real story of real people, and for me only improvisation at the moment of each part can create and convey true emotions”. The performer conveys the feeling from the first emotions of absurdity, confusion and horror through pain and loss to the present strength, pride and insurmountable struggle for life, peace and freedom!

19:30

Maciej Kuzminski Company (Poland / Ukraine) – EVERY MINUTE MOTHERLAND (duration: 60 min.)

The minimalistic yet powerful dance piece under the title “Every Minute Motherland” was created in response to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and the refugee crisis that followed it. The performance is developed by the Polish-Ukrainian team, including refugees, who shared their professional and first-hand war experience.

“Every Minute Motherland” is a documentary work with internal and external views on the events of the last months. The experience engraved in dancers’ bodies will be released on stage transcribed in motion and time and reaching for the spirit of ritual and myth.

Maciej Kuźmiński, who also helps refugees as a volunteer, calls the war in Ukraine one of the most influential events of his life. In “Every Minute Motherland” he considers the war as a massive force that over and over brings the world in physical and existential motion, questioning our values, identities and ideas of safety and home.

The performance features 7 high-class dancers who are also its co-authors. Only with the language of movement they honestly express a living experience of being torn and unsettled, suspended between the memory of the past and the unbelievable present, hoping to find a path of mutual understanding with the world.

Maciej Kuźmiński is a choreographer, pedagogue and producer, creator of the Polish Dance Network. The graduate from Trinity Laban Conservatory in London, where he completed the BA Dance Theater and MA Choreography studies. Artistic work of Maciej Kuźmiński includes either critical, politically engaged and feminist performances, or choreographic explorations of metaphysics, philosophy and existentialism.

Since 2014, Kuźmiński’s works have been presented over 170 times in 21 countries and has won over twenty international awards and distinctions.