MEYERHOLD CENTRE
MOSCOW, RUSSIA

Duration 1 hour 50 minutes

Director Maxim Didenko

Premiere took place on 3 October 2014

CREATIVE TEAM

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Set designer Pavel Semchenko

Composer Ivan Kushnir

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CAST

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Students of Studio School of Moscow Academic Art Theatre,

course of D. Brusnikin

KONARMIYA is a ballet-oratorio merging together electronic music, ensemble singing, allegoric “live” pictures and dramatic pieces. The play is based on the novels by Isaac Babel devoted to the Civil War. The Red Wave, the First Cavalry Army headed by Semyon Budyonny is crossing the Ukrainian-Polish fields on its way to capture Warsaw. What is the nature of revolution and war? The familiar world is exposed to destruction, and all that many generations relied upon is over, and everything that seemed inviolable, collapses under the influence of the popular revolt.

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“Just a few minutes are needed to destroy the biblical harmony – and now not only people, but also tables and chairs got engaged in a fluid dance. A strange force has suddenly mixed and twisted all the bodies and items, and sent them all in a long journey that the audience will follow too.

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Konarmiya’s director and libretto author Maxim Didenko, together with artist Pavel Semchenko, composer Ivan Kushnir and a group of choreographers have made from the text a piece of music, dance and drama; it is easy to see the reflections of many theatrical styles of the past, as well as of the experiments of the age that followed the events depicted in the book, of the student “visual songs” from the recent past. It seems that the show returns us to the idea that not only individuality is important on stage, but also agile “biomass” of actors that is able to change its physical features so fast and nice”. (Roman Dolzhansky, Kommersant No. 221)