context 2021
context 2021
The long-awaited premiere of Schaherezade in Moscow, Pavel Glukhov’s one-man show The Paper Man performed at the State Pushkin Museum and the State Hermitage Museum, an Evening of Contemporary Choreography, La Veronal’s Pasionaria, and the first book released by the festival’s publishing program.
On March 31, Slepok, a multimodal film created by the festival together with the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Aksenov Family Foundation, premiered. The film combined contemporary dance, music, art, and film. Slepok assembled five works by contemporary choreographers (Liliya Burdinskaya, Andrei Korolenko, Konstantin Semyonov, Alexander Frolov, Anna Shchekleina) and composers (Mark Buloshnikov, Darya Zvezdina, Vasiliy Peshkov, Alexei Retinsky, Alexander Khubeyev). The main roles of Andrey Silvestrov’s film were played by Diana Vishneva and Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
The ninth Context. Diana Vishneva International Festival of Contemporary Choreography opened on August 29 and closed October 4. As per tradition, the festival took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The festival opened with the Russian premiere of FN, staged by Estonian dance theatre Fine5. La Veronal, from Spain, displayed their futuristic show Pasionaria. As part of the festival, Pavel Glukhov’s Paper Man premiered at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Diana Vishneva performed in Alexei Miroshnichenko’s Schacherezade, staged specially for her. Nurbek Batulla, who won the audience’s choice award and best dancer award in 2020, presented his interdisciplinary project Nafs, based on the ancient Tatar epic The History of Joseph.
The Evening’s program featured choreographer Ernest Nurgali’s Without Names where the participants told their stories and shared their secret wishes and dreams, Renaissance-2021 staged by choreographer Anna Shchekleina, dedicated to inner freedom and self-recognition, as well as Do Not Wake the Sleeping Dog by Olga Labovkina based on a play by J. B. Priestley.
The festival’s Parallel Program included for the first time an audio workshop for composers and producers, led by composer, pianist, and stage artist from Switzerland Frédérique Jarabo. Additionally, Askaf Abraham, who works with Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva Dance Company led a workshop on photography, and a score of master-classes on dance from choreographers from Russia, the USA, and Spain, as well as online master-classes from American choreographers Dan Wilson and Parker Esse.
The festival’s film program featured four documentaries on the industry of dance and classic figures in the history of contemporary choreography: Twyla Tarp: In Movement, Without Barriers—a film on artist and dancer Bill Shannon who directed the choreography for Cirque du Soleil, Gallant Indies—on the French dance revolution that occured at the National Opera in Paris, and Alvin Ailey: Dance Visionary.
Aside from this, Context. Diana Vishneva announced a publishing project, curated by Stephanie Jordan, geared towards books on contemporary choreography. The program's first book was Gabrielle Klein's Pina Bausch's Dance Theatre.
