With the support of the UCF, Kyiv Modern Ballet prepares the premiere of the ballet “DiscrimiNATION”

With the financial support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the “Kyiv Modern Ballet” Academic Theatre will present a new project on 21 October — the one-act ballet “DiscrimiNATION”, set to the music of George Frideric Handel and Valentin Silvestrov.

This was reported to Ukrinform by the theatre.

“At first glance, exploring such a complex concept as discrimination may seem a non-obvious choice for the central theme of a large dance production. Yet at the heart of all manifestations of discrimination lies a conscious or unconscious desire to make another person’s life unbearable; it is the quintessence of emotional suppression, of the humiliation of the human personality,” said the production’s stage director Radu Poklitaru, speaking about the idea behind creating the new ballet.

According to the choreographer, dance is, first and foremost, emotional by its very nature, and therefore “everything vividly emotional in our lives, even with a negative connotation, is a wonderful object for study and reflection through the creation of a choreographic-directorial text — the body of a ballet production.”

According to the production’s set designer Oleksandr Bilozub, the “DiscrimiNATION” project will trace an engagement with the theme of industrialisation as a new sign-and-semantic system and with the theme of the newest forms of urban communication. The apologetics of urbanism will not only dictate a certain range of images, themes or subjects of the choreographic design, but will also prompt an intensive search for unconventional ways of embodying them, and hence a radical renewal of the entire system of expressive means, which will be evident not only in the set design but also in the aesthetics of the costumes.

As envisioned by costume designer Dmytro Kuryata, the clothing will reflect the cosmopolitanism and urbanisation of the modern world in a palette of costumes resembling the colours of a big city’s kaleidoscope — the colour of asphalt, concrete and brick.

“In the forms and silhouettes of the costumes, which are allusions to the architectural forms of cities, the so-called metaphor of the outer shell, in which a living soul is imprisoned, will be reflected. The structural quality and geometry of urban buildings form the basis of the costume’s rhythmic and metric construction,” Kuryata noted.

As the creators of the new ballet noted, “DiscrimiNATION” is a choreographic fantasy that will consist of a series of, at first glance, entirely unconnected novella-parables, which will tell, non-linearly and in the most generalised way, about different kinds of discrimination. They are joined by the continuous movements of the choreography and inner life, by the emotions and disparities of human society, in which, like a drop of water, the entire Universe and all of Humanity are concealed. They are united by ideas that will promote the values of the democratic, civilised world. They will focus attention on the problems of the phenomena of discrimination and tolerance, of contempt and mutual understanding, of a person’s awareness of their own identity, of the formation of a modern community of people that we call a nation.

As Ukrinform reported, two more premieres are planned at “Kyiv Modern Ballet” this season — one in winter for the New Year holidays, and another for the closing of the season in June.

Ukrinform