credits

Choreography: Olga Dukhovnaya based on a free interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Ballet
Choreographic score: Olga Dukhovnaya & Alexis Hedouin
Sound score: Anton Svetlichny
Lighting and costume score:: Guillaume Jouin & Marion Regnier
Outside Eye: François Maurisse
Stage management: François Aubry
Production Manager: Amélie-Anne Chapelain
Photo credit: Doriane Rio
Production: C.A.M.P, an association that receives grants from the Ministry of Culture (Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles / Bretagne), the cities of Lorient, Port-Louis, Locmiquélic, the Regional Council of Brittany and Morbihan Departemental Council.
Coproduction: le Quartz–Scène Nationale de Brest; Au bout du plongeoir  & la Coopération: Nantes-Rennes-Brest-Rouen-Itinéraires d’artiste(s).
With the support of: Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis and the DRAC Bretagne.
Thanks to: CCNRB–Collectif FAIR-E for the studio space
Photo credit: Doriane Rio
With the financial support of : Spectacle vivant en Bretagne

Olga Dukhovnaya

Swan Lake Solo

France The Twenty23

In Swan Lake Solo, there are neither white birds nor princes. In collaboration with composer Anton Svetlichny, Olga Dukhovnaya proposes her own version of Swan Lake, to turn this classical ballet into a modern performance.

On 9 March 2022, the front page of the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta featured displays of the silhouettes of four ballerinas from Swan Lake against the background of a nuclear explosion. Since the fall of Gorbachev, television has broadcast Tchaikovsky’s ballet whenever the news gets too hot. Having intended to make a large scale version, the war dealt a final blow to her project after two years of lockdown and Olga Dukhovnaya gave up the idea of choreographing Swan Lake for 32 dancers, an orchestra and singers commissioned by the new Moscow museum. Undertaking an ecological deconstruction, the Ukrainian choreographer then concentrated the entire corps de ballet in that of a single performer: herself. An essential and dynamic dance show was born from all these constraints, giving Swan Lake Solo the tones of joyful and delightful freedom.

Biography

Dancer and choreographer Olga Dukhovnaya was born in Ukraine in 1984 and currently lives in Rennes (France). She graduated from the Faculty of Choreography of Kiev in 2003 and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels in 2006, she moved to France to start a master programme in dance at CNDC Angers (in partnership with Paris 8 University), where she received the master’s degree in choreography in 2013. Her piece KOROWOD, created in 2013 received the third prize in the contest “Danse élargie” organised by Musée de la Danse and the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris (2013). In 2018 she made Sœur, a piece in collaboration with Robert Steijn. In 2022 she created a Swan Lake Solo, whose challenge is to embody with a single performer all the roles of the classical ballet. As a dancer she has collaborated with the choreographers Boris Charmatz, Maud le Pladec, Ashley Chen and took part in a video installation of Aernout Mik.

Performances

18 August 2023 Swan Lake Solo at B.Motion festival Bassano del Grappa, Italy Find out more

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