The main event is ballet master Slava Samodurov himself, who has discovered a seemingly mandatory but actually quite rare gift: the ability to think dancing and in dance, to create both very simple and very sophisticated dance ensembles.
DANCE OPEN 2024:
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS PERFORMED BY URAL BALLET
DANCE OPEN 2023:
SEVAGIN / PIMONOV / SAMODUROV PERFORMED BY PERM BALLET
DANCE OPEN 2020:
URAL INTRO PERFORMED BY URAL BALLET
Viachesav Samodurov in his own words
It’s generally hard to be a human being.
Basically, the path to quality is through the head, and that’s a pretty difficult labyrinth.
Of course, a Mask is a responsibility. Getting a reward is nice and important. But tomorrow, works begins again, and you don’t have any time already to think about a Golden Mask.
For a while, it was seen as embarrassing to choreograph in the classical manner. Everything had to be shifted upwards or sideways. By now, though, there’s been a re-evaluation: the vertical is back, and you have to know how to play with it. You can destroy it, restore balance, and bring it back again. I’m going through a process right now of rediscovering the language of classical dance, with the desire to put it back together again, the way you do with a Rubik’s cube.
Things don’t have to be either good or bad, they can just be different. With our programming, we try to educate the audience so that they can see the variety.
I want to take plot to an extreme level of simplicity, so that, on the one hand, it’s more straightforward, and on the other, more universal. Because the plot is the skeleton, but what’s more important is the choreographic structure.
Abstract ballets can be very varied – there are good ones and bad ones. But if we’re talking about the good ones, then it’s a very concentrated form of art.
For me, music is the most important thing in ballet, and dance is a way of interacting with the melodies.
In my view, dance and acting are two communicating vessels, and there should be a free-flowing form from one to the other. Our mode of thinking now is short-form and eclectic. It seems to me that eclecticism is the contemporary form of thought. Eclecticism doesn’t bother me in the slightest, and I often consciously employ it – the most important thing is to understand what for.
What’s most important is to keep moving forward, for theatre as a whole and for dancers. You come to the rehearsal room with an idea and a direction for development. In any event, the first movement for impulse is always planned. I used to turn up more often with a prepared text, but now I’m more interested in the search right there in the rehearsal room. It’s more unpredictable and more dependent on the dancers – they have to react faster to the ideas proposed to them. Sometimes, the result even surprises you yourself – on occasion, negatively. Still, there’s more life in all of this.