Festivals
Материал из HEPTACHOR.
Terpsichore in Tauris: Two festivals of Musical Movement and Free Dance
From ancient times to the present, dance is a powerful symbol for a union of body and soul, of music and movement, of people from different venues. Dance is also where everyday life comes closest to myth. Especially if one dances in a mythical place, such as an ancient Greek amphitheatre in the legendary Chersonesos Taurica, the land that inspired Euripides's "Iphigenia in Tauris". The Center for Development through Music and Dance "Heptachor", Moscow, with the support from the Department for Culture and Tourism of the City Government of Sevastopol and the Directorate of the National preserve Chersonesos Taurica, has organised a festival in Chersonesos Taurica, a national natural and cultural preserve near Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine. The main performance site was the ruins of the ancient amphitheater adapted for concert activities. Master-classes in musical movement, Duncan dance and Alekseeva Artistic Movement took place from 4 to 7 September 2007, gala-performance was shown to the appreciative public of Sevastopol people and guests on 9 September. Entrance to all events was gratis.
Follwing a very successfull festival in 2007, "Heptachor" organised the Second Musical Movement and Free Dance Festival, "Terpsichore in Tauris-II" in the legendary Chersonesos Taurica on 3-7 September 2008. Master-classes were followed by two gala-concerts at the Greek amphitheater.
- Review of the festival Terpsichore in Tauris-2008
- Film by the Crimean TV Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
For this year, we plan a third festival of musical movement and visual arts in the legendary Chersonesos; the expanded programme will include art exhibitions, master-classes and site-specific performances in the historical landscapes. We are open for collaboration: dance@heptachor.ru
Moskovskoe Deistvo
Fifth International Festival of Authentic Music and Theatre Art in Palaces and on Former Gentry Estates of Moscow, «Moskovskoe Deistvo» was organised by the Foundation, The Social Alternative, under the auspices of the Committee on Culture of the Moscow City Government and with the participation of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, from 29 June to 10 July 2005. It was dedicated to the centenary of Isadora Duncan’s first performance in Russia. Isadora Duncan’s life was tightly linked to Moscow, where she performed and where, in the early 1920s, she founded a dance group for children. Her art inspired the Russians to found their own tradition of free dance, which has been preserved and developed through the Soviet years and into the present. The festival’s special theme was, Free Dance: Another Face of Authenticity. The interest in human being, its ancient and profound nature, was in the origins of free dance. All its styles and forms strove for creating a dance as a shared, here and now event, as a social act and a living action. The festivals’ venues included the Kremlin and other historic buildings, Moscow major theatres and concert halls, parks and estates.
Among all free dance festivals, ‘Moskovskoe Deistvo – 2005’ was unrivalled in its scope and variety. It hosted 26 groups and individual performers from 16 countries, had 25 performances, 18 master-classes and demonstrations, three laboratories, four exhibitions, an academic conference and a gala-concert. The festival’s theme attracted groups of free dance and historical dance, both from Russia and abroad, including followers of Isadora Duncan, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Laban and the Russian founders of free dance, together with the representatives of more recent developments in free dance, such as contact improvisation and butoh. There were over 10000 spectators in all at the performances, not including participants of master-classes and workshops. It was a big event in Moscow’s rich cultural life, and it was widely advertised and reviewed in Russian as well as foreign mass media.
The festival’s rich programme included performances, master classes, video presentations and workshops by dancers, art scholars, educators, psychologists and psychotherapists – those who use dance in performance and in practical work with both children and adults. The festival hosted an academic conference Free Dance: History, Philosophy and Further Developments, in which art scholars, philosophers, psychologists and educators are invited to take an active part. A series of exhibitions on twentieth-century dance in Russia and abroad was held in the festival’s framework.
Transfiguration by Sound
The Centre for Development through Misical Movement “Heptachor” together with The Laboratory of Free Dance of the International Festival of Authentic Music and Theatre Art “Moskovskoe Deistvo” presents a new project, Transfiguration by Sound: The Festival of Synthetic Art with the participation of groups and individual performers, teachers and dance therapists. One of its central events shall be re-creation of the mystery-dancec, "The Poem of Ecstasy", to the music by A. Scriabin.
“Le poème de l’extase,” A Mystery-Dance. Dance performance to the music by A. Scriabin, with 60 dancers and a symphony orchestra, at the Gala of the International Free Dance Festival, Moskovskoe Deistvo, 6 July 2005, The Great Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow
Dancing Scriabin? The idol of his generation, the composer was immensely popular also with the new, modern dancers of the early twentieth century. And indeed he believed his music potentially choreographic. Once he said that both his famous poems – Le poème de l’extase and Prometheus – “could be canvasses for some symbolic theatre performances of a kind of a ballet or pantomime”:
– There are here some hints to movements, processions, dances… All this could be realised as a kind of a mystery-play; yet it is a very difficult task, and who in reality could do it?
The Russian groups participating in the International Festival, Moskovskoe Deistvo, dared to realise Scriabin’s plot. They staged a grandiose dance performance to the music of Le poème de l’extase played by the Great Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic, for the occasion conducted by Mikhail Arkadiev. The sixty dancers came from six groups representing various trends in modern dance: Duncan dance, musical movement, artistic movement, Dalcroze eurythmics, Rudolf Steiner’s eurythmics and butoh. With its two thousand seats, the Great Tchaikovsky Hall was not large enough for all those wanting to see the performance. The building was originally designed for Vsevolod Meyerhold and conceived as an ancient amphitheatre. For the occasion, the hall was restored to its original design. At the end of the mystery-dance, the performers and the public merged together in one overwhelming feeling, carried to them by the Poem of Ecstasy.
