The XII International Platonov Arts Festival will last longer and will be held in 2023 from June 2nd to July 2nd and after a two-month break will continue in September-October. Artists from Azerbaijan, Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Vietnam, Georgia, Israel, India, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and South Africa will perform in Voronezh.
Starting from 2023, the Platonov Arts Festival will last longer and become more eventful. This decision was made by the forum directorate, considering the experience of colleagues who organise a series of events throughout the year, as well as taking into account their own knowledge of the festival activities' specifics. In addition, a similar request exists on the part of the regular audience – the city residents themselves.
This year the forum will be held from June 2nd to July 2nd and from September 2nd to October 2nd. Thus, the management of the Platonov Arts Festival will give residents and guests of the region two whole months filled with bright events and amazing discoveries. A richer and longer format will allow the forum team to be less dependent on the traditional June dates and be more flexible in shaping the programme, receiving additional opportunities to invite Russian and world stars of theatre and musical art, taking into account their busy tour schedule. At the same time, it will be easier for the directorate to include additional projects in the festival programme and develop new creative initiatives.
The programme of the XII International Platonov Arts Festival will include the traditional sections "Theatre", "Music", "Visual arts" and "Literature", reflecting the most notable phenomena and names of modern Russian and world culture. The first two weeks of the forum of both the summer and autumn parts of the festival will be the most intense. The audience will be able to attend performances, concerts, exhibitions and other events at various city and region venues daily. Then, until the end of the month, events will take place in the format of festival weekends. These special programmes will include mini-festivals, performances, concerts and parties. At the same time, the events of Platonov Arts Festival will not be divided into main and additional ones, and both parts of the festival, summer and autumn, will be equally large-scale, spectacular and aesthetically verified.
The summer schedule of the XII Platonov Arts Festival includes drama and choreographic performances, as well as street shows created by teams from Russia, Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Vietnam, India and Turkey.
Particular attention of the Platonov Arts Festival will be given to outdoor events: street theatre performances, musical open-airs and spectacular shows in city parks. On June 2nd, Turkish dancer Ziya Azazi will perform in Russia for the first time. For many years he has been practicing whirling, one of the main dances of Sufism, interpreting it through various choreographic practices. The direction he created is called Dervish In Progress. During his 30-year artistic career, he has implemented many projects and collaborations and performed in 50 countries around the world. On June 2nd, Ziya Azazi will present his performances "Dervish In Progress" and "Ember". Admission to both events will be free.
Continuing to develop the direction of the public space theatre, this year the forum will hold a festival of street theatres for the first time. Spectators will see a big, bright holiday with the participation of Russian and foreign teams representing different genres and forms of street theatre art. The project will take place on July 1st and 2nd in the park "Alye Parusa". Admission to the festival events will be free.
Part of the performances of the Platonov Arts Festival programme will be shown in cooperation with Chekhov International Theatre Festival. On June 4th and 5th at the Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Germán Cornejo's Dance Company (Argentina) will present "Wild Tango". The production by Germán Cornejo will take viewers through the history of tango from its very beginnings, when men danced with each other, competing for a lady, to cutting-edge forms that combine tango, urban dance, malambo, contemporary and circus. Yerevan State Russian Drama Theatre named after Konstantin Stanislavski will perform at the Drama Theatre named after A. Koltsov on June 10th and 11th. The audience of the festival will see Gor Markaryan's performance "Gardenia" based on the text by Elzbieta Khovanets. In the centre of the plot are the stories of four women who are looking for the concept of their own family, discovering the sensual world sleeping in them along the way. From June 9th to June 11th, the Central Park of culture and leisure (Dynamo) will host the showings of the Vietnamese traditional puppet show on the water. Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre will present genre scenes from peasant life, in which magical creatures are present along with ordinary people, and the main character, the boy Teu, reads poetry, dances, glorifies kindness and ridicules villains. Thang Long is the most famous water puppet theatre that has existed for more than half a century. Every year it gives about 500 performances, which are attended by more than 150,000 Vietnamese and foreign spectators.
The performance "Wedding with the Wind" will be given by the Republican Theatre of Belarusian Drama (director - Yevgeny Korniag) at the Voronezh Theatre for Young Spectators on June 8th and 9th. The performance tells the story of a man who is in captivity of other people's decisions, a son absorbed and paralysed by mother's love. There are no words in the usual sense, and the main means of expression is the Belarusian folk song. The production received the "Theatrical Belarus" Award as the best performance of 2019 according to theatre critics, journalists and bloggers; became the best performance of the XXV International Theatre Festival "Belaya Vezha" (Brest, Belarus, 2021) and was awarded the Leonid Popov Press Prize as a large-scale performance at the XXXI International Theatre Festival "Baltic House" (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2021).
For the first time in Russia, the performance "Within" by the Indian dance company Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation will be shown. Choreographer Aditi Mangaldas strives to achieve excellence in the performance of classical Indian Kathak dance, placing it in a modern context and enriching it with relevant meanings. Her performance "Within" explores the innermost spaces of the human soul, where humanity and cruelty, masculinity and femininity, good and evil, closely intertwined, are stored in anticipation of reflection and expression. The performance was noted by critics and enthusiastically accepted by the public at international festivals in India, Romania, The Great Britain, Australia, Georgia. The performance will be shown on June 9th and 10th at the Opera and Ballet Theatre.
One of the main events of the summer programme of the Platonov Arts Festival will be the performance "Mother's Heart", staged by Andrey Moguchy at the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre. The director combines stories by Vasily Shukshin, texts by Nicholas and Helena Roerich and poems by Kozma Prutkov and takes the story of an ordinary Russian woman Avdotya Gromova, who is trying to save her son, to an epic level. The production received eight nominations for the Russian National Theatre Award "Golden Mask - 2023". "Mother's Heart" will be shown at the Voronezh Concert Hall on June 24th and 25th.
A separate block of performances will be the traditional "Platonov programme" dedicated to the writer's work. The performance of the St. Petersburg Youth Theatre on the Fontanka "Weapon of Hearts", staged by Yuri Tsurkanu based on the script by Andrey Platonov "The Ivanov Family" will be shown at the Drama Theatre named after A. Koltsov on June 6th and 7th. The artists of the Serov Drama Theatre named after A. Chekhov will present "Dzhan" by Dmitry Zimin, based on the writer's story of the same name, at the Voronezh Concert Hall on June 10th. And on June 12th, at the same venue, there will be showings of the performance "The Innermost Love" by the Tula State Academic Drama Theatre named after M. Gorky staged by Gennady Trostyanetsky, who combined in his work fragments of the short stories "Fro", "Yushka", "Aphrodite", the stories "The Foundation Pit", "The Juvenile Sea", "The Innermost Man", the novel "Chevengur" and other texts by Andrey Platonov.
The music programme of the XII International Platonov Arts Festival will feature symphony concerts, chamber and solo performances by musicians, as well as open-air events, truly loved by the audience, in the White Well, Ramon and the Green Theatre. Artists from Russia, Israel, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and South Africa will perform in Voronezh.
A major event in the music programme will be a concert with the participation of the world-famous violinist, violist and conductor Shlomo Mintz (Israel) and the Symphony Orchestra of Voronezh Concert Hall. The musicians will perform works by Brahms, Beethoven and Saint-Saens. The concert will take place on June 8th on the stage of the Voronezh Concert Hall with the support of the Embassy of the State of Israel in Moscow. On June 10th, young pianists from China will perform at the Voronezh Philharmonic Hall: Xuhua Yun and Rui Ming, who will present works by Prokofiev and Scriabin, Brahms and Rachmaninoff. Another chamber concert will take place on June 16th – the State Trio of the Republic of Kazakhstan FORTE TRIO will perform in the Philharmonic Hall. The artists of the trio masterfully perform works of different eras and genres: from baroque music to jazz, from classical to contemporary compositions. At the festival they will perform pieces by Debussy, Sibelius and Brahms, as well as the poem "Koroghlu" by the Kazakh composer Arman Zhaiym.
The series of open-air events will start with the performance of the Quinteto Astor Piazzolla, which will be held on June 4th in the Castle Park in Ramon. The collective was created on the initiative of the wife of the composer Laura Escalada Piazzolla and is designed to preserve and promote the legacy of the musician. The quintet consists of virtuoso soloists who share the aesthetic views of the maestro and were greatly influenced by his creative manner. On June 11th, one of the most anticipated events of the Platonov Arts Festival – the concert "World Music in the White Well" – will take place. It will feature South African band "The Soil", whose style is defined as Kasi Soul and is an original mix of jazz and Afro soul with hip-hop and Afro-pop, as well as "Light in Babylon", a band from Turkey, performing original Eastern Mediterranean music. On June 18th, another music event will take place in the open air – the concert "Opera Voices in the Green Theatre." Ramiz Usmanov (tenor, Uzbekistan), Enkhbat Tuvshinjargal (baritone, Mongolia) and Saltanat Akhmetova (soprano, Kazakhstan) will perform accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the Voronezh Concert Hall. Musicians will perform masterpieces of world opera classics. For the first time, a three-day open-air event "On the Sand" will be held at the Platonov Arts Festival. From June 23rd to June 25th, indie and folk bands from different regions of Russia will perform on the embankment of Petrovskaya naberezhnaya.
The programmes of the sections "Literature", "Visual arts" and "Theatre-plus" will be announced later.
Tickets to performances and concerts of the June programme will go on sale on March 24th at 10 a.m. They will be available on the festival website, at the festival ticket offices, as well as on the website and at the ticket offices of the festival ticket operator kassir.ru. The booking of the tickets will only be available on the first two days of the sales. The reservation will be valid for 24 hours. Students and seniors will be given a 20% discount when buying tickets at the festival ticket offices (except for the concert "World Music in the White Well", open-air events "On the Sand", the traditional puppet show on the water). The discount is issued upon presentation of a supporting document and does not apply to tickets of the first two, most expensive, price categories. The dynamic pricing system will operate for the "World Music in the White Well" concert and the "On the Sand' open-air event: the earlier the ticket is purchased, the lower its cost will be. For all the concerts of the "On the Sand" project, it will be possible to purchase a pass at the best price. Tickets for the events of the Platonov Arts Festival can be purchased with a Pushkin card. Detailed information about tickets can be found on the festival website in the "Tickets" section.