STANISLAVA OVCHINNIKOVA | 2 YEARS, 3657 DAYS | 2024
2 YEARS, 3657 DAYS was a two-act evening of Ukrainian performing art hosted by Kaunas Artists’ house on the 22nd of February 2024 to commemorate 10 years of Ukrainian resistance to russian aggression.
During the first part of the evening, a dancer and choreographer, Anton Ovchinnikov (UA/LT), performed “Beauty of the Beast,” a live work that critically examines the role of russian classical ballet in the country’s military-industrial complex, as well as the culture’s role within state ideology and propaganda. In particular, Beauty of the Beast focused on classical ballet as an art form that reproduces and normalizes violence over the human body.
The live performance was followed by a screening of 10 Ukrainian contemporary dance films created in response to the russian full-scale invasion. The program, titled “Moving in Mayhem,’ presented reflections on how artistic practice adapts to, reflects on, and documents the conditions of existential threat, in the context of which dance emerges as a method of processing ongoing traumagenic circumstances and the means of resistance.
The program was curated by Stanislava Ovchinnikova (UA/FI) and implemented with the support of Kaunas Artists’ House, Lithuanian Dance Information Center, and Lithuanian Contemporary Dance Association. The film program “Moving in Mayhem” was curated in collaboration with the Let The Body Speak project and presents the works by Dmytro Zakharov, Danyil Zenkin, Svitlana Oleksiuk, Olha Kebas, Yana Shevchenko & Dmytro Abalmasov, Yaroslav Kainar, Lesia Prusova, Olena Vakhrameieva, Yeva Voloshyna, Valeria Koptseva, and Yaroslav Korotkov.
The image on the cover: Still from the film “Light” by Valeria Koptseva and Yaroslav Korotkov.
Photographer: Gražvydas Jovaiša