New Baltic dance

(Photo: Vladimir Lupovskoy )

At first, four years ago, the organizers of the festival in Vilnius only wanted to introduce the public to modern dance from the Baltics. Today the festival covers almost the entire Northern European region. Over the course of a week, more than forty projects from Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Poland, Denmark, France, Germany and Russia were shown in Vilnius. Despite the fact that every year more and more European artists come to the festival, interest in Russian dance does not wane. This year, for example, two Ekaterinburg groups - the Provincial Dance Theater and the independent Kipling company - toured Lithuania after the festival.

Six months after the show in Moscow, the twenty-year-old masterpiece “Giselle” by Mats Ek, performed by the Kullberg Ballet troupe, was brought to the festival in Vilnius.

The opening of the festival was the work of the Norwegian Jo Stromgren: “Dance Bows to the Art of Football” and “Arrival” based on Beckett’s plays. The absurdity, aggression and irony of Stromgren combined with the acting charm of universally trained dancers is exactly what is expected from the “new” dance in Vilnius, where open and emotional Russians are loved no less than buttoned-up northern formalists.