Experience the Magic: International Festival of Modern Choreography IFMC-2024 Kicks Off in Vitebsk

If you’ve been postponing your trip to Vitebsk, now is the perfect time to go. The 35th International Festival of Modern Choreography, IFMC-2024, starts on November 20th. This event gives you plenty of reasons to visit Vitebsk, as the festival’s program is interesting, vibrant, and unique!

The Festival Program

Traditionally, the IFMC program consists of two main parts: a modern choreography competition and guest performances by renowned collectives. This year, the competition will have international status. According to the festival’s director, Marina Romanovskaya, competitors, members of the international jury, and the expert council represent over ten countries, including Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Slovenia, Spain, Egypt, Italy, and Sweden.

The finale of the modern choreography competition is the festival’s main intrigue and highlight. The IFMC stage has seen many future stars of choreography and modern dance. Every year brings new sensations! This year’s finale, which includes 32 participants (both solo performers and collectives) selected through a video screening, will take place in two parts. You can see the best dance performances presented to the jury at two concerts: at 4 PM and 7 PM on Saturday, November 23rd. On November 24th, the festival’s final day, the award ceremony will take place at the renovated and modernized Vitebsk Concert Hall, where you can enjoy the performances of the IFMC-2024 laureates.

A Unique Competition

“This year’s competition will be mature, with many adult participants who can express their thoughts through body language. Another distinctive feature will be the presence of a large number of female choreographies, and the performances will explore female themes. All the works are strong! I think the jury will have a tough time…” (Marina Romanovskaya, director of the IFMC festival)

Over the 35 years that the International Festival of Modern Choreography has been held in Vitebsk, it has formed its own regular audience. Some come to see the birth of new stars of modern choreography, while others come to see the already established stars of choreography in such a dense concentration in one place at one time. Judge for yourself: five days of the festival and six invited collectives!

Opening Performances

Modern dance does not deny its kinship with classical ballet. Therefore, this year’s IFMC festival will open with performances by the St. Petersburg State Academic Ballet Theater named after Leonid Yakobson. When Yakobson told his dancers to take off their pointe shoes, go on stage barefoot, and forget about their straight backs during the Soviet era, he was considered an eccentric and a destroyer of ballet. But personalities like Maya Plisetskaya and Mikhail Baryshnikov divinely danced the new choreography and saw Yakobson as a prophet of the new ballet. And they were right!

On the opening day of IFMC-2024, November 20th, you can see two performances by the Yakobson Ballet Theater in Vitebsk: the ballet “Roden” set to music by Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, and Alban Berg, created by Leonid Yakobson himself in 1971 and restored by the theater troupe in their repertoire in 2021. And “Playful Chastushkas” set to music by Rodion Shchedrin – a 2022 production created by the contemporary Russian choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov. Both of these productions, speaking to the audience in different languages about the physicality of man, were shown this summer on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater of Belarus as part of the “Ballet Summer at the Bolshoi” festival.

Ticket Information

The prices for the touring show were high, but the hall was still sold out, and not all those who wanted to see these diverse productions in Minsk could do so. The Vitebsk festival provides an opportunity to catch up on what you missed, and at a very democratic price of 25-55 rubles per ticket. By the way, it’s better to buy tickets for IFMC in advance: they sell out quickly!

Guest Performances

On the same day, November 22nd, the stage of the Vitebsk Concert Hall will welcome the long-time and constant favorites of the IFMC festival and the Vitebsk audience – the dancers of the “Ballet of Evgeny Panfilov” Theater from Perm. Every year, they bring their already classic productions and new choreographic performances created after the passing of Evgeny Panfilov to Vitebsk. The one-act ballet “The River” belongs to the “golden heritage” of the theater. The premiere of this production by Evgeny Panfilov took place in 1998, and it was restored to the troupe’s repertoire in 2008. Another “classic of classics” of this most unclassical ballet troupe is the three-act ballet “Romeo and Juliet” – Evgeny Panfilov’s authorial interpretation of the Shakespearean tragedy set to music by Sergei Prokofiev. Last year, the performance was shown at the festival in Vitebsk, and this year it can be seen in Minsk on November 21st at 7 PM on the stage of the Minsk Concert Hall. We highly recommend not missing it!

It so happened that all the guest performances of this year’s IFMC festival will be brought by collectives from Russia. On November 21st, the “YATEATR” Company from Moscow will present their performance “Lullaby for Mayakovsky,” choreographed by Alexander Isakov and Viktoria Yanchevskaya, on the stage of the National Academic Theater named after Yakub Kolas. In the second part, the troupe of the Theater of Modern Choreography “BALET.TEATR” from St. Petersburg will take the stage to present the Belarusian audience with the production “PETRUSHKA” choreographed by Daria Vergizova. On November 22nd, the performance “These Are Just Things,” in which, besides the dancers, 300 (!) kg of various things participate, will be presented by the “ETO Russian Company of Contemporary Dance” from Moscow. The choreographer of the performance and the founder of the dance company, Alexander Mogilev, is well known to the Belarusian audience as the choreographer of all seasons of “Dancing on TNT.” This year, he will be part of the international jury of the IFMC-2024 competition. At a press conference on the eve of the festival, Alexander Mogilev confessed that, being a dancer and choreographer himself, he has very complex and ambiguous relationships with various competitions and contests between creative people.

“I don’t really like being a jury member because I always side with the artist. Art and creativity cannot be evaluated. Love for someone else’s creativity is always subjective.” (Alexander Mogilev, choreographer, member of the international jury of IFMC-2024)