A choreographer and performer from Kyiv, Ukraine, with a powerful physique of worldwide creative work to her identify, brings her experience to the district this semester as a visitor choreographer for Corcoran Faculty of the Arts and Design’s Autumn Dance Live performance November 17-19.
Anton Ovchinnikov’s piece for subsequent month’s live performance will function six college students and three music tracks, a Ukrainian people music and two “up to date digital jazz” tracks, he stated. For the piece’s up to date choreography, a collaboration between him and his college students, he says he was impressed by the concept of unsaid phrases between individuals who as soon as knew one another however at the moment are strangers.
“It was my thought, to clarify to them what it is about, and now they will mirror this topic via their very own physique in their very own choreography,” Ovchinnikov stated.
Ovchinnikov stated he met Corcoran dance trainer Maida Withers after they attached at a dance class in Moscow twenty years in the past, and years later, in 2018, they collaborated on a bit referred to as 60 MOVEMENTS with FUTURE GAZE. This work explored their widespread choreographic type of postmodernisma motion with roots in trendy dance that goals to push the boundaries of the traditional dance world via individuality, which influences a lot of Anton’s choreographic work.
Ovchinnikov and Withers created 60 MOVEMENTS with FUTURE GAZE for the sixtieth anniversary of the Nationwide Exhibition Middle of Ukraine, a constructing constructed by the Soviet Union in 1949. Ovchinnikov stated he and Withers have been impressed by the juxtaposition of Ukrainian dancers and Soviet structure, stylizing the dancer’s actions in order that they work together straight with the constructing, weaving across the massive neoclassical columns and descending the extensive staircase.
“All of the dancers who took half within the present have been born after Ukraine’s independence,” Ovchinnikov stated. “So it was type of a brand new technology that had by no means lived within the Soviet Union.”
Ovchinnikov visited GW in 2019 for the primary time to show choreography to Corcoran dance college students at Withers’ invitation, as the 2 stayed in contact. Again within the district, Ovchinnikiov carried out an unique piece on Friday on the opening of LEGACY: Fifty years of dancing on the wirea celebration of Withers’ profession on the Corcoran Gallery.
Ovchinnikov stated he admires Corcoran’s dance program for giving college students the chance to pursue tutorial research along with dance, giving them “a wider view of the world.” He taught choreography at Kyiv Nationwide College of Tradition and Arts, the place he additionally obtained levels in theater path and choreography, for greater than 10 years.
Along with educating, Ovchinnikov works as an expert choreographer, producing items for worldwide festivals and performing as creative director of his firm, Black O Dance Theater! Tidy. Ovchinnikov established the corporate in 2005 and primarily works with college students and former colleagues from the Nationwide College of Tradition and Arts.
Ovchinnikov brings his dancers a dynamic vary of experiences from his profession spent presenting his work at festivals throughout Europe and collaborating with different creators like Withers. Earlier than arriving in DC this fall, he stated he spent two months touring to bop festivals and humanities boards in international locations together with Lithuania, Hungary and Germany to carry out unique choreography and current monochromethe dance movie he created this yr.
Monochrome is a 15-minute function movie filmed and edited by Ovchinnnikov as an expression of his house nation’s “despair and despair” after Russian troops invaded in February. The movie opens in black and white, revealing Ovchinnikov dancing alone in a shallow pond to electronic-style music of his personal composition as the colour slowly settles in.
“After the battle began, I hadn’t danced for six weeks or two months or one thing like that as a result of I did not really feel in a position to dance,” Ovchinnikov stated. “After which right away I made a decision to make this film and since I began dancing once more, I actually felt it introduced me again to life. In order that was the concept dance can convey again this sense of the world to have colours.
Ovchinnikov stated he was in a position to journey overseas as an artist in the course of the battle with the permission of Ukraine’s Minister of Tradition and Data Coverage. He stated the Ukrainian authorities has supported artists like him who showcased their creative expressions of the Ukrainian trigger to lift assist and consciousness for the battle overseas.
At house in Ukraine, the creative neighborhood has suffered devastating losses and lots of artists have left Ukraine, searching for security and work, he stated. Nonetheless, those that stay have used their work “as a weapon” to create a creative outlet for civilians and arrange festivals for all artwork mediums to lift funds for the Ukrainian navy.
“A lot of the works have been created after the battle began and mirror folks’s state of affairs and emotions, generally one thing that occurred previously destroys cities and villages, so something that may particularly inspire folks folks to proceed to reside in Ukraine and create and likewise regain that sense of neighborhood,” Ovchinnikov stated.
This text appeared within the Version of October 10, 2022 of the Hatchet.