DANCÆ DANCAE

Culture:

20 August 2026

Culture:

DANCÆ DANCAE

20 August 2026

Q: You trained at the Bolshoi Theatre and later worked with Eifman Ballet. How did the discipline and intensity of classical ballet shape you as an artist? What were the biggest challenges you faced during those years?

A: I think discipline is the foundation of everything, irrespective of what field you're working in. Obviously, in ballet it's very ingrained in the DNA of the profession, and whatever discipline people associate with ballet, it felt like 10x in Russia. They work incredibly hard there. My biggest challenge and lesson was realizing how much larger my capacity was than I what I thought it was. There were many moments when I thought I couldn't give any more or do any more, and I realized I actually could. As an artist, that became the foundation of how I work. People often assume creativity is something that simply flows out of you. Yes, there are moments like that, but the majority of my work is about keeping at it until it feels finished, even in moments when I don't feel particularly inspired.

Q: When did you realize that you wanted to move beyond the traditional ballet framework and develop your own artistic language?

A: It was a gradual process. I had a very bad injury in my late twenties and had to step back from dance for a while. For the first time, I was experiencing art and culture more from the perspective of an audience member, and in completely different contexts. It made me think a lot about who art is actually for. I often found that not only classical work, but also avant-garde and experimental work, could feel difficult to access if you didn't already understand its language. That really shaped me - for me, the audience's experience is always incredibly important. I want people to be able to enter the work, feel something and connect with it, even if they know nothing about dance. DANCÆ developed organically from those ideas.

Q: How do you combine the precision and heritage of ballet with the openness and experimentation of contemporary dance in your work?

A: I think it's the natural evolution of the art form. The base form is classical, yes, but over time people, not only myself, naturally begin experimenting by introducing different gestures, dynamics and movement languages. Classical ballet actually lends itself incredibly well to experimentation because the dancers have such extraordinary control over their bodies that they can do almost anything with them. For me, some of the most interesting work comes from bringing together things that you wouldn’t naturally pair together. That tension between something highly codified and something much more instinctive or unexpected is what I find endlessly exciting and want to continue developing further.

Q: With DANCÆ and Ballet Sur_real, you bring dance into dialogue with installation art, electronic music, and other artistic disciplines, creating work that is deeply connected to Berlin’s cultural landscape. What drew you to this multidisciplinary approach, and how has it shaped the way you think about choreography and movement?

A: I think Berlin as a city has very much informed me, and therefore so has its cultural scene. As an artist, you're always taking different pieces of your life and experiences you've had and putting them together into something that becomes uniquely yours. For me, my background in ballet, coupled with my interest in Berlin’s cultural scene, naturally led to the work I'm making today.

"Working across different disciplines has also expanded the way I think about choreography. The architecture of a space, the installation, the lighting, and even the audience all become part of the overall work and influence how the choreography is experienced."

Q: Do you ever feel pulled away from classical ballet, or even a little tired of its conventions? What does contemporary ballet let you say that classical ballet couldn't?

A: I don't know if I would say I'm tired of its conventions. I think the classical arts will always have an important place in our cultural landscape, but of course it's exciting to experiment and take things further. To me, that's the natural progression of any art form. What feels experimental now may look completely conventional or even traditional in 100 years. That's also what I love about art: there is always more to do. You can continue to morph, develop, restructure and question what already exists. Contemporary ballet gives me the freedom to take the foundation I know so well and place it in completely different contexts, allowing it to speak about the world we live in now.

Q: What continues to inspire you today and keeps you exploring new forms of movement and expression?

A: For me, it's very much the deeper, darker parts of ourselves that we don't always like looking at or confronting. In terms of movement, that means exploring steps, shapes and dynamics that aren't always pretty or perfect. I'm very interested in taking the ballet framework and making it feel more raw, visceral and instinctual. There is something exciting to me about taking bodies that have been trained for so much control and precision and allowing something more primal to emerge from within that structure. That tension between control and instinct, perfection and distortion, is something I keep returning to in my work.

Q: Is there a place in Berlin you keep returning to?

A: For me, Berlin is full of a million memories, and I think each one of them has shaped me and made me who I am today. I couldn't say it was just one place, moment or encounter. It's really the sum of all of them that stays with me every day. The city has been the backdrop to so many different versions of my life, both personally and artistically, and I think all of those experiences have somehow found their way into the work I make now.