Diana Vishneva celebrates her 15 years on stage with a ballet gala and exhibition in St Petersburg

Diana Vish­neva will cel­eb­rate the 15th anniversary of her dan­cing career later this week with an exhib­i­tion and a bal­let gala.

The exhib­i­tion, fea­tur­ing pho­to­graphy and video mater­ial of Vishneva’s dan­cing, opens at the Museum of Theatre and Music Arts in St Peters­burg tomor­row, June 22. The gala, with a pro­gram built around sev­eral con­tem­por­ary dance pro­duc­tions, will take place at the Mari­in­sky Theater on June 23.

“I’m in no way try­ing to sum any­thing up with this exhib­i­tion. It’s an attempt to talk about what interests me at this moment. Earlier this year, we showed Angelin Prel­jocaj’s ‘Le Parc’ at the Mari­in­sky Theater. I then went on to pre­pare ‘Lady of the Camel­lias,’ one of my favor­ites. And now I’m focused on my work with the Martha Gra­ham company.”

Vish­neva, who has been dan­cing with the Amer­ican Bal­let Theatre since 2005, said she will present “Anna Karen­ina” at the Met­ro­pol­itan Opera in New York in July, a new pro­duc­tion that is ded­ic­ated to Maya Plis­et­skaya.

Vishneva’s June 23 gala at the Mari­in­sky Theater will fea­ture “Errand into the Maze,” cho­reo­graphed by Martha Gra­ham, one of the founders of con­tem­por­ary dance. This will be the first show­ing of “Maze” in Russia.

“Two years ago, I saw a per­form­ance of the Martha Gra­ham com­pany, and felt a strong affin­ity. I knew there were no clas­sical dan­cers in her pro­duc­tions, so I was amazed when they invited me to work with the com­pany for a whole sea­son. For this reason I knew imme­di­ately that I wanted to per­form some­thing from the Gra­ham rep­er­tory at my gala. It’s so strange that pro­duc­tions by this extraordin­ary cho­reo­grapher are still not presen­ted in Russia.”

The gala’s pro­gram is built around con­tem­por­ary dance pieces. Accord­ing to Vish­neva, this is because a clas­sical image is too hard to present within the frame­work of a gala. She also believes that it is import­ant that the Mari­in­sky Theater pays more atten­tion to con­tem­por­ary ballet.

The gala also fea­tures epis­odes from “Three Point Turn” by cho­reo­grapher Dwight Rhoden, Angelin Preljocaj’s “Le Parc,” and John Neumeier’s “Lady of the Camel­lias,” among oth­ers. Vish­neva will dance together with Roberto Bolle, Des­mond Richard­son, Ben­jamin Robert Schultz, and Vladi­mir Malakhov.

Des­mond Richard­son & Diana Vish­neva in Three Point Turn — photo © & cour­tesy of Nina Alovert

Full gala programme