Dear young ballet stars!

As all the XIX season of Dance Open festival is postponed, our master classes are postponed too. We will immediately inform you about new dates of master classes and wish we could do it very soon. Take care of yourself! Now we prepare our virtual master class. And traditionally – see you at Dance Open!

In the far spring of 1738, in the capital of Russian Empire, Saint-Petersburg, boys and girls have begun learning “foreign step” for the first time. However witnesses remembered that already in the first steps of young dancers it was possible to feel national character. French roots of fine arts and original Russian softness, melodiousness of performance manner, inosculated and creatively comprehended by our ballet school, engender admiration and feelings in the soul of spectator till the present day. And in order not to cut the gold thread of this mastery, during almost three centuries boys and girls stand up to the ballet bar in the city on Neva River every morning. Today all the world is penetrated with ideas of globalization, and the ballet, of course, has not become an exception. On the one hand, this is an exchange of technical innovations, and from the other hand - averaging out and depersonalization. If the world leading ballet schools succeed to save their individuality, then ballet art will gladden us with its wealth and diversity. Dance Open workshops – it’s a small part of most important process of saving and distribution of Russian ballet school basics. Its participants come to Saint-Petersburg, motherland of Russian ballet, in order to breathe up heady air of victories, and in the same time, to feel (with every tired, exhausted fiber of their being) not just all stones, but also all sands on the way to this victory. In order to reach a certain point of mastery, you will need eight years. In the modern world children and their parents often want immediate result: they are used to it – you push the button, and the computer return result. In ballet – it’s not like this! Ballet classes – this is a quite boring learning of ballet alphabet, from which words and phrases of lightsome inspiring dance will be formed. In order to make it happen, a master and an apprentice should practice “calligraphy” of each separate movement. The volume of work is very impressive. So five days of workshops is not a panacea for “victims of clip thinking”. But exactly during these five days participants experience a real paradigm shift in thinking and attitude, thanks to which next eight years of work will not be wasted.

REVIEWS

TO APPLY

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'UA-7400244-2'); !function(){var t=document.createElement("script");t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="https://vk.com/js/api/openapi.js?160",t.onload=function(){VK.Retargeting.Init("VK-RTRG-312380-hXWII"),VK.Retargeting.Hit()},document.head.appendChild(t)}();

(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src= 'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f); })(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-P9MRNF4');

Nikita Shcheglov Soloist with the Mariinsky theatre Master classes Dance Open: 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018

Graduated with honours from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in 1991 (class of Professor Semenov). Joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 1991. Soloist since 1997. Repertoire includes: La Bayadère (Solor, Golden Idol), Don Quixote (Basil), Le Corsaire (Conrad, Lankedem), The Legend of Love (Ferkhad), Schéhérazade (Golden Slave), La Sylphide (James), Swan Lake (Pas de trois), Romeo and Juliet (Troubadour), Giselle (classical Pas de deux, Act I), La Esmeralda (Acteon, Diana and Acteon Pas de deux). From 2000-2002, was a lead soloist with the Colorado Ballet Company and Cincinnati Ballet Company. Repertoire included Freedman´s Cinderella (The Prince) and The Nutcracker (Cavalier), Kozadayev and Petipa´s Swan Lake (The Prince), Balanchine´s Stars and Stripes, Peterson´s Don Quixote (Basilio) and Caniparoli´s The Nutcracker (Nutcracker Prince). Private engagements: International Prima Ballet Galaxy (1996, Taiwan), Vikharev Selections II (1997, Japan), guest artist with ODU Ballet (1991,1998 – USA), Ballet Official, Teatro del Libertador (2000, Argentina), Spoleto Festival (2002, Italy), Cork City Ballet (2002, Ireland).

Arthur Mitchell Dance Theatre of Harlem Master classes Dance Open: 2012

African-American dancer and choreographer who created a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem. Among other awards, Mitchell has been recognized as a MacArthur Fellow, inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame, and has received the United States National Medal of Arts and a Fletcher Foundation fellowship. In 1955 Mitchell made his debut as the first African American with the New York City Ballet (NYCB), performing in Western Symphony. Rising to the position of principal dancer with the company in 1956, he performed in all the major ballets in its repertoire, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Nutcracker, Bugaku, Agon, and Arcade. Mitchell was the only African-American dancer with the NY City Ballet until 1970. Choreographer and director of the NYCB George Balanchine created the pas de deux in Agon especially for Mitchell and the white ballerina Diana Adams. Although Mitchell danced this role with white partners throughout the world, he could not perform it on commercial television in the United States before 1965, because states in the South refused to carry it. Mitchell left the New York City Ballet in 1966 to appear in several Broadway shows, and helped found ballet companies in Spoleto, Washington, D.C. and Brazil, where he directed a dance company. The Company he founded in Brazil was the National Ballet Company of Brazil.

Lyubov Kunakova Coach and Repetiteur Master classes Dance Open: 2012

People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1983) Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1974) Recipient of the medal of the order “For Services to the Fatherland”, 2ndclass (2009) Prize-winner at the Varna International Ballet Competition (1972) Diploma-recipient at the International Ballet Competition (Moscow, 1969) After graduating from the Perm School of Dance in 1970 (class of G. Kuznetsov) she made her debut at the Perm Tchaikovsky Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, where until 1974 she performed roles including Swanilda, Odette-Odile, Kitri, the Lilac Fairy, Aurora, Milady and the Queen (The Three Musketeers, choreography by Nikolai Boyarchikov) and lead roles in such ballets as Paquita and The Nutcracker. From 1974-1992 she was a leading performer of the ballet repertoire at Leningrad’s Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet (renamed the Mariinsky in 1992). She appeared in the ballets Giselle (Giselle, Myrtha), The Sleeping Beauty (Aurora, the Lilac Fairy, Princess Florine), La Bayadère (Nikia, Gamzatti), Swan Lake (Odette-Odile), Raymonda (Raymonda), Don Quixote (Kitri), Le Corsaire (Medora, Gulnare), Paquita, La Sylphide (the Sylph), The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (Zarema), The Legend of Love (Mekhmeneh-Bahnu) and Scotch Symphony among others. She has staged the Mariinsky Theatre’s versions of classical ballets in Minsk (Don Quixote, Chopiniana), Athens (The Sleeping Beauty), Tokyo (Paquita) and Brazil (Giselle). She has taught classical dance at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (1997-2002, her pupils including Anastasia Kolegova, Tatiana Tkachenko, Natalia Sharapova, Vera Garbuz and Yulia Repet); she has also taught in Japan, Brazil and South Korea. Since 1997 she has been a ballet-mistress at the Mariinsky Theatre and coaches roles with Viktoria Tereshkina, Elena Yevseyeva, Daria Vasnetsova and Alexandra Iosifidi. In the same capacity, she has worked with the St Petersburg Konstantin Tachkin Ballet since 2001.