- What’s your physical activity about?(Larisa Barykina);
- According to the results of the IFMC'2022 competition (Svetlana Gutkovskaya);According to the results of the IFMC'2022 competition (Svetlana Gutkovskaya);
- IFMC-2022: the Space of Intellectual Dance (Tatyana Kotovich).

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What’s your physical activity about?
By Larisa Barykina (Russia) - music and theater critic, Chairperson of the Expert Council.

My experience at the Vitebsk IFMC is three decades. And this has always given and gives the main opportunity: to observe the process. How modern dance develops in the post-Soviet space, what happens in the time perspective, how it looks in a general European context. Over the years, many of the main participants in this process of Eastern Europe have visited the festival; we have seen the rise and development of the now famous modern dance troupes, the emergence of new choreographers and the growth of the dancers' skills, the birth of styles, tendencies and trends. For 30 years, the festival has its own idols and favorites of the public, unfortunately, today some have passed away, or got out from the social circle. The festival every time is a small life: meeting old friends, famous colleagues, meeting new characters and heroes, a lot of work and a lot of communication.

Festival-2022, held under the sacramental number XXXIII and in the difficult circumstances of modern realities, was, first of all, a strong-willed victory of its organizers. After two years of a forced pandemic pause, in the midst of problematic international events, it impressed with the scale, the number of participants in the competition and an extensive guest program. From a creative point of view, it captured a certain picture of modern dance, describing the state of affairs in Russia and Belarus. Rare guests from abroad, participants from Kazakhstan - made their note and diversified this picture.

Among the innovations of the last festival is the name of the chairman of the international jury. Igor Kolb, former principal of the Mariinsky Theatre, Honored Artist of Russia, now Chief Ballet Master of the National Academic Bolshoi Theater of Belarus. Probably, the main feature of the work of the two juries, practitioners and theorists this time was the similarity of their views on the competitive realities and the complete coincidence of the results. This happens very rarely, and to be honest, I don’t remember such a thing.

The form of the festival was traditional, once I had to compare it with a layer cake. Here, the public, guests-professional, and participants could always get the most impression for themselves. The structure of the festival includes: first of all, the competition, an extensive evening guest program, a series of master classes and visual accompaniment in the form of exhibitions. The festival began with the opening of an exhibition of watercolor paintings by Vladimir Vasiliev. The great dancer, a living legend, a man of incredible charm has already visited Vitebsk at the festival and this time among the works he brought were those dedicated to the festival city. A series of daily master classes from jury members and invited experts is, of course, an important part of the festival. In general, it can be stated that many years of general education at the festival regularly bear fruit.

This year's guest program showed that the concept of "modern choreography" for the authors of IFMC is always quite broad and voluminous. And this time it included contrastingly stylistic and multidirectional performances. Received quite warmly by the public, “Rachmaninoff”, staged by Alexei Rastorguev, is an acquaintance with a new group for Vitebsk: the State Youth Song and Dance Ensemble “Altai” from Barnaul. It would seem where the “song and dance ensemble” is and where is modern dance? Not only folk dancers took part in the performance, but also a singing group, soloists, who became a plastic ensemble. It seems that the choreographer had an almost impossible task to “braid” everything into a single action. The great music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, whose anniversary is celebrated in 2023, and not just anything, but the Piano Concerto No.2. To record impressions and feelings from the Russianness of this music. To show the dance and vocal capabilities of the group “Altai”. And also - the need to create a visual image and atmosphere .... There were many tasks, the choreographer did quite well with something, because, perhaps, no one has ever seen such a mixed genre. But from the point of view of the choreography itself, modern theatrical style, there are few achievements.

In general, the desire of young choreographers to move away from pure dance, from plotless choreography and offer the audience a “foothold”, a plot, a name or an image, in order to direct the fantasy in the right direction is very noticeable. This is how performances arise, which feature a well-known literary plot – “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” staged by Olga Labovkina and the Kazan Dance Theater “The Road from the City”. I bet that the intricate plot from the life of English high society, where each of the six interrelated characters has its own skeleton in the closet, was hardly understood by those who are not familiar with the plot of the play by J. Priestley, or who have not seen the brilliant film by V. Basov “Dangerous bend”. The result is an indecipherable relationship between the characters, just a theater of physical action. Although the performance undoubtedly has a certain visual and plastic culture. Or another version of the “foothold”, when in the center there is the figure of an artist, creator, a person with a difficult fate. In “Gaudi” by Victoria Archaia performed by the Independent Company from Moscow, perhaps, the task of presenting the image of the famous Spanish architect was not solved. Showing the profession of the character in the title of the performance turned out to be an unsolvable task. Or maybe it's not necessary? Then I want to see at least some correlation with his creations, but no.

Much more successful in this sense was the performance “Libertad”, dedicated to the Mexican dancer Frida Kahlo, staged by Alexei Rastorguev. On the whole, it is more simple, intelligible, sometimes too rustic, but much is redeemed by the general atmosphere, music and the image of the main character performed by the star of the Panfilov Theater Maria Tikhonova.

The Evgeny Panfilov Ballet Theater, which is adored in Vitebsk, was generally very fully represented at the festival. In addition to the ballet about Frida, the troupe showed a program of miniatures and fragments from Panfilov's performances, including “Eight Russian Songs” and, probably, the main point of their mini-tours - the renewed performance “Capitulation” by Panfilov. One of the latest works of the great Russian choreographer, tough and merciless, I still remember its terrible insights and predictions. Paying tribute to the courage of the current dance group and the courage of the authors of the renewal, I will say that the exact following of the text from the video recording is one thing, but only the author himself is apparently able to convey the spirit, meaning, accents and subtexts. They say that the performance made a stunning impression on those who only heard about Panfilov, but never saw him. And it's probably good. But I am one of those who not only saw, but remembers well how it once “sounded”. In general, this is a problem of maintaining the style and ideas of great choreographers who have already passed away. It's easier with Balanchine, always based on the classics, albeit modernized. In addition, there is the Balanchine “Fund”, which clearly monitors the renewals. Worse - with modern, in particular with Bejart. Quite a problem - with contemporary dance, for example, with the theater of Pina Bausch. Everything lives and functions, the question is how.

The renewed “Kannon Dance” group from St. Petersburg also performed at the festival with a choreographic opus by Ivana Balabanova from North Macedonia “On / Off” and pleased with good technical training. After a long break, one of the most famous Russian troupes came to the festival – “Provincial Dances” from Yekaterinburg. But it did not bring the work of its leader, Tatyana Baganova, but showed the performance “Skin” by Maura Morales, a Cuban from Germany. A kind of choreographic exploration of the thirst for tactile contact. Unfortunately, as in many other cases, the huge and remote stage of the Centre of Culture “Vitebsk” was not suitable for a subtle and intimate performance. It lost a lot when it was made public.

Finally, the competition itself. It pleased us with the fact that for many years we have been observing well-trained dancers, we see the growth of physical form and capabilities. For 30 years, we have learned to dance in a new way, the techniques of different styles of contemporary dance are no longer a secret behind seven seals. And now the main question that I really wanted to ask after the absolute majority of competitive opuses - what is your physical activity about? What, in fact, do you have in your soul, and are you overwhelmed by what you certainly want to say? Or do the performances appear only because it is necessary to submit something for the competition, work out the application, master the budget (underline)? Why it is not very noticeable WHAT actually worries you, and HOW in your interpretation modern dance is connected with modernity. Of course, there were exceptions, and they are all, pardon the tautology, without exception, awarded. They, exceptions, came from Tyumen, Minsk, Chelyabinsk, Gomel, Yekaterinburg, Mogilev. I repeat once again, this year all the viewers coincided. And we will, as before, expect shocks, surges, discoveries and pleasures in the future.

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According to the results of the IFMC'2022 competition.
By Svetlana Gutkovskaya (Belarus) - Head of the Department of Choreography, Professor of the Educational Institution “Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts”, Member of the Expert Council.

In total, 39 works were shown in the first competitive round, 26 of them on the stage of the Concert Hall “Vitebsk” and 13 – in the Yakub Kolas Drama Theater. To participate in the second public competitive round (final), the jury and the expert council selected 15 works.
The Grand Prix was won by the competitive work “Every action gives rise to reaction” of the Dance Theater “Prospekt” from Tyumen, created by choreographer Oksana Baklanova to the music of contemporary foreign composers.
Through interesting mise-en-scenes, constructions and dance patterns, smoothly flowing from one to another, as well as harmonious movements of beautiful male bodies, the choreography of the first part of the work "sang an ode" to the beautiful. The appearance on the stage at the beginning of the work of nude bodies, only in flesh-colored underwear, as one of the trends in modern choreography, was more than justified by the director's intention. As the researchers of modern dance note, physical nudity makes one reveal emotionally as well, when dancers reveal a tense inseparable connection between sensual impulses and physical movements. In this case, the nakedness of young male bodies, as if coming out from under the chisel of an ancient Greek sculptor, only emphasized the appeal to the origins, the primordial nature of the characters, referring the audience to antiquity in all the brilliance of its harmony and beauty, which caused them emotional uplift, spiritual and aesthetic pleasure. A powerful contrast to the theme stated in the first part was the torn, frankly ugly movements that appeared in the second part, referring to the plasticity of primitive people, simple linear patterns, mise-en-scenes with a demonstration of violence (the appearance of a black trouser pair on previously naked bodies only strengthened this effect, causing analogies with modern man), the world seemed to be turned upside down. In her work, the choreographer boldly turned to the application of the quotation principle, to the use of double interpretation.

In pairs of the main categories of aesthetics “beautiful and ugly”, “comic and tragic”, “sublime and base”, modern dance most often refers to the second of them. It goes without saying that in art the “ugly”, “tragic” and “base” can also be a source of aesthetic pleasure, which is based on the joy of recognizing the reality around us, a sense of the author's mastery. In this case, there is an acceptance or rejection of his artistic views and civic position. At the same time, today there is an acute lack of affirmation in art of the ideals of beauty, which allow expanding the limits of manifestation of the higher feelings of a person. The work “Phantom DNA” (music by Kuat Schildebaev, choreographer Gulnara Adamova) performed by the Contemporary Dance Troupe “Samruk” from Almaty (Republic of Kazakhstan) attracted attention by cultivating beauty, which was in everything, from the bodies of dancers, performing skills and costumes, in which they were dressed, to the spatial-lexical and lighting solution. In this sense, the work differs favorably from many others. According to the decision of the expert council, the Contemporary Dance Troupe “Samruk” under the direction of Gulnara Adamova, which presented five diverse works in the competition, was awarded a special prize “For style diversity in the repertoire”.

At the competition, the choreographers had a tendency towards brevity of the "statement". Some competitive works could only be classified as sketches, i.e. sketches for the work itself, where the plastic action ended immediately after the presentation of the leitmotif material and the presentation of the image. It is difficult to say whether this is due to the fact that choreographers deliberately neglected the laws of the dramatic development of a choreographic work that have been developed over the centuries. At the same time, in our opinion, the “application” made it possible to further develop the originally presented plastic idea and extend the action in accordance with the laws of spectator perception. Such works include “Not Pairing” (music by Travis Lake, choreographer Tomiris Mettybaeva) by the Contemporary Dance Troupe “Samruk”, “Therapy” (music by Antie Greyet-Fuchs - AGF, text from the book by Heinrich Wolkenstein “Der Sexualtherapeut”, choreographer Alexandra Demyanova), “Decision fatigue” (music by contemporary composers, choreographer Pavel Luntsevich) by Pavel Luntsevich project. In my opinion, there was not enough dramaturgical development in the competitive works “Clio” (music by Nicolas Jaar, choreographer Diana Yurchenko) of the Theater Studio of Modern Choreography of Diana Yurchenko from Vitebsk, in which the image of the muse of history was vividly presented by one of the best performers of this troupe Marina Bobrikova, and in “Female Duck” of Dance company “Dennitsa” from Yekaterinburg (folk song “The duck swam ...”, choreographer Anastasia Mironova). The miniature “Female Duck” stood out against the general background with vocabulary based on the synthesis of folklore movements imitating the habit of a bird, which is very typical for many examples of East Slavic folklore, and elements of modern dance. This work was awarded a special prize “For the use of folklore root culture in modern dance”.

In a number of works, a successful synthesis of different types of arts was observed, as well as an appeal to actual methods of providing artistic information, including digital technologies. In some competitive works, a collage of video sequences, musical and literary texts, sound effects was skillfully used. Synthesis of expressive means of choreographic art and dramatic theater (“Buy Your Narcissism” - choreography by Elizaveta Shevtsova), circus (“Pulp Fiction” - choreography by Adlet Tamenov), cinematography (“Planet A” - choreography by Valentin Isakov) was demonstrated. Competitive work “Planet A” of the project “X-perIments” of the Gomel State College of Arts named after N. F. Sokolovsky was created to the music of Eduard Artemyev and Ryuichi Sakamoto with fragments of the film by Andrei Tarkovsky embedded in the context, which further strengthened the theme of spirituality and faith raised in this work. Its author, Valentin Isakov, who has been participating in IFMC as a contestant since 2013, received a special award named after Evgeny Panfilov as the best choreographer.

It should be noted that the performance skills of the Belarusian contestants have noticeably increased in recent years, most of which are fluent in various modern dance techniques. The works of many choreographers abounded with incredibly technically complex elements.
The solo part in the competition work of the Ensemble of the Department of Choreography of the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts under the name “Dust” (choreography of Yevgeny Tsybulko) was distinguished by a special emotionality of the performance and received a special award “Perspective”. To embody the philosophical meaning of the work and convincingly convey the complex range of feelings of the creator, who dreams of creating a masterpiece at any cost and resorting to dubious means to “nourish” his inspiration, the soloist performed by Kirill Tereshchenko was largely allowed by the beautiful music of the contemporary Scottish composer Anna Meredith.

Analyzing the musical material that was chosen by the choreographers to implement their ideas, the following should be noted. Firstly, a wide range of styles, genres and trends: works by classical composers (Antonio Vivaldi, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), Soviet composers (Eduard Artemiev), contemporary foreign composers and groups (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ezio Bosso, etc.), experimental music (Antie Greyet-Fuchs), folk songs (“A duck swam on the blue sea” performed by Olga Sergeeva) and, as indicated in the program, the music from the Tik-Tok videos. Secondly, the musical texts of many competitive works were compiled compositions in which the semantic orientation of the original author's images changed according to the context. Thirdly, most of the competition works were dominated by musical material, which, with a high degree of conventionality, can be described as background music. As a rule, there was no melody in it, only a certain rhythm was set. It seemed that the choreography was originally composed without any music at all, and then musical accompaniment was “superimposed” on the finished plastic text, which “did not interfere” with its performance. Music, if used in a work, should be included in the complex context of plastic action, helping to create a multi-layered image and reveal the director's intention.

The competitive work “Connect” by Denis Chernyshov from Chelyabinsk stands apart in this row, it included a drum set, a synthesizer, as well as household items that were used as musical instruments. Denis Chernyshev acted in this work both as a choreographer and performer, and together with Shamil Sabirovov and Vladimir Reinert as an author of music and musician. The competitive work, in which, thanks to the given conditions, a new organization of movements occurred in synthesis with live musical accompaniment, having a special atmosphere, intrigue, unexpected director’s moves, and interchangeability of three performers on stage, was awarded the II prize.
Taking into account the fact that the content of the works of modern choreography, as a rule, is already veiled by various complex images, symbols, metaphors, allegories, choreographers should take the title of their works more seriously, and rather even more responsibly. Sophisticated titles, with such an encrypted meaning, which no one but the author himself can comprehend, and most often in English, only irritate the viewer, "confuse" him, and, most importantly, make it difficult to understand the author's intention.
I am inspired by the successful performance of groups from Belarus. In total in the international competition: two works of Belarusian choreographers got the 1st prizes, one work - the 3rd prize and two works - special prizes. Among them are the following domestic groups and individual performers: Folk Choreographic Ensemble “Alesya” (Mogilev), Evgeniya Nikolaichuk project, Dance Theater “Altana”, the Ensemble of the Department of Choreography of the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts (Minsk), project “X-perIments” of the Gomel State College of Arts named after N. F. Sokolovsky. A very good result!

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IFMC-2022: the Space of Intellectual Dance
By Tatyana Kotovich (Vitebsk) - Professor, Doctor of Art Criticism, professor of the Department of History and Cultural Heritage at Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherov, Member of the Expert Council.

Modern choreography in Vitebsk as a co-event and an event of the spirit. It should be emphasized that the IFMC project turned out to be the longest and most successful among other well-known and promising ideas of the 1980s. In the Soviet and post-Soviet artistic existence, the author's proposal by Marina Romanovskaya and her team became the first and for a long time (for a decade) the only initiative of the competition in the art of movement/body/thought/individuality/new danceability.
At the beginning of the history of the festival, among those who were at its origins and composed its legend, its matrix, determined its level and direction of development were: “Still Life Factory” (Vladimir Polyakov, Moscow), “Aura” (Birutė Letukaitė, Lithuania), “Free Ballet” of Nikolai Ogryzkov (Moscow), the Provincial Dances Theatre (Ekaterinburg), “Fine 5” (Renee Nõmmik and Tiina Ollesk, Estonia), the Perm Theater “Ballet of Evgeny Panfilov”, Contemporary Dance Theatre of Natalia Fixel (Novosibirsk). These choreographers and dancers defined the system of the festival in its main elements - in dance as a stage manifestation of the harmony of body and spirit.
The initiators were interested in the work as a holistic stage phenomenon, as something that combines modern imagery with a modern worldview, something that goes beyond the limits of movements and poses required in the classics, which reflects the peculiarity of the dancer's movement, his/her thoughts and his/her freedom. And if on the continent and in America postmodern dance had by that time both established and dynamically developing canons, then in our zone it was an absolute innovation and territory of experiment, search, actual thinking. Despite the fact that both in the Vitebsk festival and in modern post-Soviet choreography, in general, a path of more than thirty years has been traveled, this art remains multi-vector, including incompatible and quite compatible types of plasticity: folklore and acrobatics, techniques of martial arts and oriental elements, - repetitive, in a sense constantly cited, which have become a common postmodern practice, but the main core containing improvisation, momentary stage existence and freedom of movement. “Talent is the only piece of news that is always new,” in the words of Boris Pasternak. This is the first and always affecting the perception quality of the competitive dance. And the next is the effort of the perceiving mind for analysis, understanding, revealing the meanings of the work seen.

The 33rd IFMC, held at the end of November 2022, hosted 24 contestants from Belarus, Russia, Armenia and Kazakhstan. The program included eight competitive blocks, an exhibition of watercolors by Vladimir Vasiliev “Dancing Brush” and photographs by Rustam Syunyakov “Wind Loaders”, guest performances and “After the Curtain” meetings, theoretical master classes by members of the expert council, press conferences. The conversations of researchers/critics and contestants/performers touched upon the depths of today's artistic thinking, and performance skills, and crisis cross-style situations in the space of modern dance and borrowings, touched on the Suprematist ballet in Vitebsk and the dance mathematics of Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus, an analysis of the productions of the current competition was made. It was in these conversations that the rule of movement / renewal of the festival tradition was emphasized: 1) an appeal to folklore and the neo-primitive, which gives unexpected results and changes the prism of perception of art (as was the case with the avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century: M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, K. Malevich); 2) an appeal to the thinking of the first laureates and leaders of the IFMC, whose work has remained relevant and fresh to this day (as shown by the evening of restored ballets of Evgeny Panfilov); 3) philosophical understanding of the created work as an event of the spirit.

The Festival Leaders. Grand Prix of the IFMC-2022 jury – “Every action gives rise to reaction”, Dance Theater “Prospekt”, Tyumen, choreography by Oksana Baklanova; and Evgeny Panfilov Prize of the festival's expert council – “Planet А”, “Х-perIments” project, Gomel State College of Arts named after N.F. Sokolovsky, choreography by Valentin Isakov.
At the IFMC-2022 festival, the performance by Valentin Isakov became the most conceptual. Its structure is open, consists of three elements, and at the same time its integrity is complex, not smooth like a ball, but as if it draws the viewer inside and at the same time penetrates into the pores of the viewer's soul, stratifies perception and immediately gathers it together, piercing with pain in its almost detached meditation.
On the back of the stage there is a video projection from fragments of films by Andrei Tarkovsky: from “Stalker”, “Solaris”, “Andrei Rublev”, “Mirrors”, from the plots of modern films - with running people and overturned cars. The characters of Tarkovsky read the Old Testament, talk about the cosmos and man, about knowledge and ignorance, about the desire and aspiration of man. The central scene becomes “Our Father”, when a clear and loud velvety and disturbing voice reads to everyone the understandable and always new/main text of the prayer, and a scene from “The Mirror”, where the wind crushes tall grass and the door of a wooden house opens and a little boy comes out of it, and the scene from “The Mirror” with the words: “I can talk!!”.
Dancers act in the center of the stage floor, they are almost static, their movements are minimalistic, their bodies are always vertically directed or gathered sitting in the center and as if warming each other or saying goodbye to each other, but there are few tilts, spirals and rotations, runs, lifts and take-offs. The performance on the stage is like a fragment that has fallen out of the video projection, like a scalpel cutting through the video image with black arrows/figures, taking each figure out of Tarkovsky's film statement and pushing it out, silent and frozen in pain. The performance begins with a lantern in pitch darkness and ends with the light of a lantern. The director uses the movement "step", i.e. a combination of almost Taoist dynamics with statics. And this allows us to see and understand how the body concentrates pain in itself, how it freezes and turns to stone.
On the proscenium, from backstage to backstage, sparkling large thin disks fly out and roll on the stage floor, like the skeletons of automobile wheels, fall and roll again. The dancers sometimes pick them up, and those metaphors for the remnants of some civilization turn into the subject of a dance action, and then, filling the stage, become a metaphor for the apocalypse.
The director overcomes the documentary nature of the statement and publicity, he expands the space/time of the play: Tarkovsky's visual thinking allows him to reach the horizon of beingness, childhood and old age as points of human existence, Solaris space as infinity and conscience/morality, nature and its strong storm wind, to all thoughts about the destiny of man. A person frozen in pain on earth, by such a stage director’s technique, seems to overcome his finiteness, his limitation and his pain, he expands to universal pain, absorbs this world into himself, becomes a rolling sharp disk, and turns into infinity. The choreography of this performance allows not only to emphasize the dance, but to “speak” (we emphasize, in Tarkovsky: “I can speak!”) with the help of the body.
Lighting designer Semyon Davydenko varies the visual score of the production, slightly emphasizing either the dancers, or the video image, or sharply only the movement of the discs, uses side lower stage lights or “dissolves” the existing on stage, as if plunging it into a haze of disappearance.

The work of the Ensemble of the Department of Choreography of the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts “Dust” staged by Yevgeny Tsybulko (special award of the expert council “Perspective”) is also conceptual, where the author’s statement is symbolic and at the same time, obviously substantive/realistic. In the velvet terracotta light in the center of the scene, the young man peers into something unknown and strange: curved, folded mysterious something has a convex body and does not have a head, in place of which there is a translucent ellipsoid. The frozen figure slowly turns around, moves with catlike plasticity and attacks. From the upper pocket of the young man's shirt, a bag appears, from which dense and thick dust spills out, he blows it off, scatters it again on the stage floor, draws patterns on it. The stage space dissolves in clouds of dust, new figures with ellipsoidal heads crawl out of the backstage, surround the man and he suffocates in their arms. Dust becomes the main active object, incomprehensible to the man, from something ordinary turns into a mystical creature that exceeds understanding - and the performance passes into the space/time of metaphysics, its meaning becomes opposition to Fate, and the impossibility of this opposition, and dumbness before the power of Fate.
Undoubtedly, in these two works there are elements of meditativeness in slow, fluid movement, as if in a semi-real dream or quick haze of dust.

Sound meditation practices are used by the participants of the production “Connect”, project and choreography by Denis Chernyshov, Chelyabinsk (Second Prize of the Festival Jury). Musical instruments (drum set, etc.) are placed in the center of the stage, with sounding bowls between them. Performers and dancers, and musicians at the same time, they are placed in the space of music and exist in it, play and move slowly, and the horizontal of the body is the main supporting element of movement. We can catch some plot and see the dialogue of the performers, read their relationship, but the most obvious is the gradual loss of plot and even the materiality of the instruments. The soloist begins to extract sounds from the bowl in the center, they grow, fill the stage and the auditorium, plunging everything into the space of meditation.

Modern dance affirms openness, contact of choreography. However, what the experts discuss at the festival sufficiently emphasizes the opposite: the works are not addressed to the viewer, they force him to penetrate into the meanings of both the aesthetic language and the moral sense, the works are not revealed immediately and require to be deciphered by the viewer. For example, you need to know and understand the work of Andrei Tarkovsky in order to enter the space/time/meanings of “Planet A”; to imagine the activity and mystery of the ancient Greek Moirai in order to be included in the space/time/meanings of “Dust”; have information about sounding/singing bowls and their impact on a person in order to hear the sound of space in “Connect”.

However, it should be noted that parody performances were shown at the festival, with everyday plots - characteristic, playful. These are productions by Diana Yurchenko “Clio”, “A beau” (Vitebsk). And “Pulp Fiction” choreographed by Adlet Tamenov (Contemporary Dance Troupe “Samruk” Almaty), the performance of which opened the final concert of the festival and caused a standing ovation in the hall: circus, playful, having plot, refined, plastic, light. The sophistication and intelligence of the performance allows you to distinguish it from the category of mass culture and realize it as a parody of mass culture.

“Every action gives rise to reaction” by Oksana Baklanova (Dance Theater “Prospekt”, Tyumen) unites the intellectual core of the festival and its aesthetic concentration: in the most difficult moments of existence, a person seeks beauty - the movement of eight men with sculptural bodies on the stage, their interweaving in the spirit of the famous sculptural compositions of “Laocoön”, their fan-shaped compositions of bodies, movements in chains along the back border of the stage, their "streams"-handshakes, their circular plastic compositions - make up a spectacle of energy and harmony, send back to ancient Greek mysteries and olympiads. The second part of the work presents a different intonation, although to a certain extent the movements and compositions are repeated (if in the first part the dancers performed in corporal costumes and were like naked olympians, now they are dressed in black strict suits). Other meanings also arise here: the words from the Constitution about the innate rights of a person and about the dignity of a person are constantly repeated. The performance combines and contrasts two themes: the innate harmony of the body as an object of cosmic beauty and cosmic mathematics, and the innate trampled human right to individuality and the beauty of existence.
In the space of mass culture, the IFMC festival in Vitebsk remains again and again annually revived space of intellectual art of spiritual search and intuition of the soul. The festival of 2022 is a confirmation of development, youth, energy of young bodies, beauty and harmony of choreographic solutions, non-stop searches.

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