DANCE OPEN 2023

From 10 to 18 April, the XXII season of the International Ballet Festival DANCE OPEN will be held on the main stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater with the support of the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.

More than 250 artists representing 10 world choreographic brands from France, Hungary, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina and Russia will come to St. Petersburg.

After the vicissitudes of the last three years, the DANCE OPEN team managed to organize the festival in a full-fledged format - the way it was originally conceived and existed until recently: foreign troupes, non-trivial, sometimes contradictory and sometimes shocking performances, trend-setters of ballet choreography, Russian premieres, master classes from the world’s leading choreographers and public talks, where the current trends of modern ballet take shape.

The program of the XXII season is woven from stories of personal and creative victories that happened “in spite of”. The perky Tie-Break street dancers, who perfected their virtuoso tricks on the outskirts of the city, made the most refined audience, first in France, and then the whole world, gasp with delight. The Brazilian company of the Municipal Ballet of São Paulo, which began as a ponderous anachronism, has become a modern, contemporary dance company full of creative energy. A dozen Malevo cowboys, armed with whimsical drums, whips and indomitable male energy, overturned the worldwide stereotype of "Argentine dance = tango" and gave rise to a fashion for exotic malambo. Three artistic directors of Russian ballet theaters - one has long been rooted in the Urals, the other took over the troupe right on the eve of the pandemic,

On April 10, the festival will be opened by the Russian premiere - a virtuoso comedy in the break-dance style "Lobby". If a person is given a sense of humor, he will be able to make anything funny. Even the exhausting race to hotels and rooms, which is the bane of any busy person these days - whether he is a popular artist or a sought-after businessman. The aesthetics of taxis and airports, the philosophy of “living everywhere and nowhere”, hotel luxury for an hour and ostentatious comfort strictly for paid time - how desirable at first, then familiar and… how, in fact, it is ridiculous.

The Lyon troupe Tie Break is a company of virtuoso hiphopers, those who are able to perform fouettes on their heads and arch their backs in such a way that it looks like it has 168 vertebrae. The dance, which once began on the street and frightened respectable citizens with the intensity of battles, has long become its own on the most venerable stages. At the same time, virtuosity and passion did not decrease - it is just as important for the guys to capture the attention of a multi-tiered theater, as before - their peers from the outskirts of the region.

"Lobby" is a real "break-dance-hip-hop-comedy" in the spirit of Chaplin and Buster Keaton, created on the melody and in the improvisational logic of jazz and performed by super virtuosos of the most dizzyingly acrobatic of dance genres.

April 12 DANCE OPEN offers the audience a recent premiere from Perm - the program "SEVAGIN/SAMODUROV/PIMONOV". Never before have Russian theaters produced evenings marked on posters only with the names of the choreographers. And such a course of the festival is a sign of recognition for the artistic directors of three theaters: Vyacheslav Samodurov, former premier of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Ballet of the Netherlands and the English Royal Ballet, has been heading the Yekaterinburg Ballet for 10 years; Anton Pimonov, former soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre, has been directing the Perm Ballet for three years; and studied at the Academy of Russian Ballet. A. Ya. Vaganova and after her gone to dance in the Moscow Musical Theater named after Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Maxim Sevagin in the same theater a year ago became artistic director. But these are the people who define today’s ballet landscape of the country:

The three-part premiere of the Perm theater is designed to show how ballet can, and even should be in the 21st century. The inexhaustibility of the language of classical dance is evident, to which the modern stroke is given by performing virtuosity, wit of choreographers, their sensitivity to the pulsation of the era. And, of course, work with living composers: two of the three scores of this evening were written by order of the Perm Theater by Vladimir Rannev and Anton Svetlichny. Both are authors with experience, but this is the first time they perform in this genre.

On April 14, three one-act ballets in the Movement program will be presented by one of the leading ballet companies in Brazil, which has gone through all stages of development: from venerable European classics through a passion for Balanchine to the works of modern choreographers.

The Municipal Ballet of São Paulo strives to be at the forefront of dance trends, and its motto to this day is the words: "Our movement speaks the truth about the time in which we live."

The high technical level of its dancers and the entire production team has long attracted top choreographers from all over the world who are interested in realizing their creative plans. And this time in St. Petersburg there will be shown a program staged by Cayetano Soto, Ihsan Rustem and Itzik Galili - European choreographers whose professional formation took place in the Netherlands, and therefore their dance language combines both classical learning and a decisive dispute with traditions. Bright, sharp plastique, open feelings and unexpected solutions - all this is used by choreographers to tell the audience their vision of the common good and personal happiness.

On April 16, the Argentine troupe Malevo will continue the tour program of the festival - a dozen guys driving shod heels into the floor, tapping the rhythm on big drums and ready to conquer all the women of the world.

Their show grew out of the national dance of the shepherds: since the Middle Ages, in the vast expanses of the steppe, but in a close circle of good friends, the gauchs danced precisely Malambo. Having entered the professional stage, folk dance already exists according to other laws of the genre - it is transformed, supplemented with new expressive means in order to convey to us, today’s viewers, its original deep essence.

The team of choreographer Matthias Jaime, who in his youth was engaged in classical ballet, flamenco, and tango, definitely likes fusion. If the old gauchos were mostly devoted to playing bass drums, then Malevo introduced the zapateo as an important ingredient in their show and generously seasoned it with a new aesthetic: bad guys (“malevo” in Argentina is called a brawler or a hooligan) with burning eyes and fluttering in the wind with black hair they burst onto the stage in leather jackets - and the audience itself does not notice how they jump up from their chairs and begin to dance to the beat of a frantic rhythm.

Jaime perfectly imagines what a modern high-tech show should be like (with sophisticated lighting and video technologies), and, taking the national dance as a basis, the choreographer modernized it, making it consonant with the 22nd century - and the malambo ceased to be a museum artifact, but became an event of a bright and exciting life.

The rich calendar of the XXII season of the festival will be supplemented by 2 events of the educational program.

On April 12, the festival team will hold a scheduled professional meeting DANCE OPEN Talk. Leading choreographers from the Northern and Southern hemispheres will share their opinions on global and local dance trends. Cassi Abransis, choreographer, artistic director of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo (Brazil) will meet in the Royal Foyer of the Alexandrinsky Theatre; Anton Pimonov, head of the ballet troupe of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre; Leila Guchmazova, dance ballet critic and Olga Belenkis, creative producer of the DANCE OPEN International Ballet Festival.

On April 17, all lovers of modern choreography, and especially those who practice the Spanish national flamenco dance, will have a real gift: they will be able to join the master class of Matias Jaime, the leader and founder of the world-famous Argentinean men’s dance company MALEVO. The choreographic lesson will take place on the stage of the Musical Comedy Theatre. Entrance is free for those who wish, but pre-registration is required on the festival website.

Despite the saturation of the program of the XXII season, the DANCE OPEN Gala was and remains the epicenter of the turbulent whirlpool of festival life, which invariably attracts all the best and most interesting from the world of choreography. The traditional choreographic show will take place on April 18 on the main stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. The program of the evening will include performances by foreign representatives of the main stages of the world, and Russian ballet stars - those who shine every day on the stages of our best theaters, but for DANCE OPEN they always save something cherished, something most beloved.

For more information about the XXII season of the festival, visit danceopen.com