New New Age. Performative Programme

Three performances accompanying the New New Age exhibition.

Programme 

The New New Age exhibition project is an artistic commentary on new spirituality and its associated worldview systems, their specific manifestations, commodification, and subsequent transformation into merchandise. The performative programme of the project serves as a commentary from the adherents of new spirituality, as well as from those who study these practices critically or through bodily experience.

Illustration: Dora Sidorenko

Two of the three works were created with the participation of actual New New Age practitioners, from tarot readers to shamans, or based on their direct instructions. According to the curators’ concept, this provides an opportunity to quite accurately study the cartography of various kinds of spiritual revelations, catharses and utopias, and better understand the lives of people immersed in the intimate secrets of their alternative craft.

In Aeon, director Daria Bresler and sound designer Zoya Belova reinterpret not only the currents and concepts of the New New Age but also the performance format itself. Their work, which became the conceptual framework of the exhibition, is an audio performance, whose station-episodes visitors can listen to at any time and in any sequence.

Dance Oracle by curator and choreographer Olga Tsvetkova offers a new perspective on both dance and numerological practice: it is a mantic session supported by choreography.

In Great Health, Anya Kravchenko, Anton Vdovichenko, and Anastasia Tolchneva work with scientific and quasi scientific theses and theories, proposing to discuss greatness and imperfection, alchemy and science, trials and errors. Such New New Age methods as healing and wellness are subjected to thorough analysis and deconstruction.

Curators
Andrey Parshikov, Anastasia Proshutinskaya, Karen Sarkisov

Programme

Great Health

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When: 14, 15 Dec, 15, 16 Feb, 15:00–15:45
Where: Central Platform
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Dance performance creators, choreographers Anya Kravchenko and Anton Vdovichenko, together with composer Anastasia Tolchneva (Lovozero), address the theme of health and alternative perspectives on it. The choreography draws from wellness movement practices and exercise systems but doesn’t follow them exactly. Movements deviate from the prescribed ones, and these distortions form a series of dances.

Photo: Anya Todich

During the performance, various judgements about the body, physical health, medicine, and self-healing possibilities are voiced. Scientific-like, philosophical, and poetic theses meet with the reality of the body in motion. Great Health doesn’t provide prescriptions but captivates like the pulsating shell of a soap bubble, like an alternative scenario of the present.

Great Health includes quotations from Antonin Artaud, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Vladimir Bibikhin, the 14th Dalai Lama, Joe Dispenza, Susan Sontag, Ivan Illich, Timothy Morton, Lisa Robertson, Linda Hartley, and Wim Hof.

The work on the performance began as part of the Easy: A Dance in the Making.

Anya Kravchenko is a dancer, artist, and choreographer. Her works have been presented at the 2nd Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art at Garage Museum and the 6th Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg). She is co-curator of Sdvig Studio of Performative Arts and the @tanecbezuma.festival. She teaches in the Art Practices in Contemporary Dance programme at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Co-founder of the Joies Terrestres dance company.

Anton Vdovichenko is a dance artist, choreographer, and teacher. He has presented solo and collective works at Manege Exhibition Hall, Garage Museum workshops, the Museum of 20th—21st Century Art of Saint Petersburg, the General Staff Building of the Hermitage, the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre (Saint Petersburg), and other venues. Co-curator of Sdvig Studio of Performative ArtsSdvig Studio of Performative Arts and the @tanecbezuma.festival. As a teacher, he has collaborated with TsEKh School of Contemporary Dance, Bye Bye Ballet Contemporary Dance Centre (Saint Petersburg), and the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory.

Anastasia Tolchneva (Lovozero) is an artist and musician working at the intersection of sound, performative and technological practices. She has participated in international contemporary art exhibitions and electronic music festivals. Winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin Award (2017). She collaborates with artists and researchers working in dance performance, somatic movement, and sound technologies. She has released her works on the labels Full of Nothing, Klammklang, and CANT.

Choreography, dance, concept
Anya Kravchenko, Anton Vdovichenko

Lighting
Emil Avramenko

Sound
Anastasia Tolchneva (Lovozero)

Video
Sasha 3aets

Set and costume design
Dasha Malinina

Dance Oracle

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When: 12, 19 Dec, 2, 8 Mar, 12:00–21:00
Where: Pump room
18+

In this work, choreographer and curator Olga Tsvetkova has combined two practices important to her that have likely never intersected before: dance and numerology. The artist attempts to decode a natal chart using the language of numbers and body. First, Olga will conduct numerological consultations, which are open to all interested participants. This will be followed by a dance interpretation of this analysis. According to Olga, this will help expand and deepen the understanding of the natal chart, looking beyond rational knowledge.

Sessions start every hour from 12.00 to 20.00.

The Dance Oracle performance takes place in the exhibition space during opening hours and is open to all visitors, including those not participating directly. Opinions and recommendations received during the numerological consultation express solely the personal view of the performance artist. Each participant makes their own decision about using the received recommendations.

Olga Tsvetkova is a choreographer and director. She is the artistic director of the New Dance Academy project. She studied at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO, Netherlands) and completed her master’s degree in directing at DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. She is the creator of the performance Human After All (2019, for dance company Norrdans, Sweden), the dance performance Soulwhirl to music by Vangelino Currentzis (2022, Radio House, St. Petersburg), the ballet-initiation Requiem. Solo to music by Iannis Xenakis and Petr Glavatskikh (2022, New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg), and other works.

Aeon

When: 12 Dec — 9 Mar
Where: Pump Room
18+

What is the New New Age? How does new spirituality differ from previous versions of the New Age? How do its followers feel in current reality? While preparing this work, director Daria Bresler and sound designer Zoya Belova interviewed practitioners of various new spiritual traditions—bioenergy therapists, tarot readers, healers, astrologers, shamans, and followers of human design.

Aeon is arranged as a promenade through the exhibition. The speech of contemporary gurus becomes a commentary on various works of art, and a focal point that helps viewers determine for themselves whether the era of new spirituality has arrived or if it’s just another marketing ploy.

To listen to the performance, you will need headphones, which can be obtained in the exhibition space. Connect them to your phone and go to the page with audio files via the link.

Daria Bresler is an artist, director, and designer. She is the co-founder and participant of the Vokrug Da Okolo theatre laboratory (2013–2021). Daria engages in artistic research that results in multidisciplinary site-specific performances, and describes her works as immersion into the sociocultural context of phenomena, which she explores through different channels of perception: slow listening, attentive viewing, tactile interactions sometimes bordering on meditative states. “It is important for me to create a space for reflection where there is room for various perspectives,” says the artist.

Zoya Belova is a musician, sound artist, composer, and DJ. Since 2019, she has been working with interdisciplinary artists, creating music and sound design for performances, both dance and conceptual. Her areas of artistic interest include rituality, routine, and trance states.