Lecture performance: Sdvig (Russia) at MDT

SDVIG performance art studio is a chamber space in the heart of St. Petersburg run by a group or dance artists: Anton Vdovichenko, Anya Kravchenko, Kamil Mustafaev and Masha Sheshukova. This is a place for their creations as well as a hub with regular classes, workshops, lectures, concerts with local and invited artists, which gathers people, who are interested in alternative ways to comprehend reality through conscious work with body and mind.

SDVIG is now coming to Stockholm in a cultural exchange between MDT, höjden and Sdvig (Russia) to introduce each other to local situations, share practices and experiences on the ways how local performing arts work with the current critical agenda. This project funded by the Swedish Institute seeks to address the lack of exchange of contacts, know-hows and practice of performing arts in Stockholm and St Petersburg.

The project is supported through the Creative Force Program funded by the Swedish Institute.

The team of the Sdvig studio in Stockholm: Anton Vdovichenko, Masha Sheshukova, Kamil Mustafaev and Anya Kravchenko

14:00 – 15:30 lecture-performance

15:30 – 16:00 break

16:00 – 17:00 conversation

In this lecture we will try to accomplish an impossible task – in 1.5 hours to separate the practices that have formed the Sdvig studio in four years of its existence. To share the experience of self-organization in dance, research and creation of works in a Russian cultural landscape that is unfriendly for contemporary dance and performance.

Post-Soviet legacy, collective interaction, imagination, memory, savagery, pop culture fascination and disillusionment with language. We will dance, talk, sound, offer to do something with us. Dress comfortably and if you are reading a book now, take it with you.

After the break, we will be open to the conversation, your questions and ask our own about how you relate to “critical dance practice”, how dance production and dance practice mutually determine each other, and whether dance itself can develop a language, that is, produce new knowledge