"New Land" was staged by Anna Shchekleina, a choreographer from Yekaterinburg, at the XI International Platonov Arts Festival. The production was included in the Platonov-2021 cycle, which brought together theatre performance events associated with the works or the personality of the writer. In addition to "New Land", the project included Polina Kardymon’s theatre performance events "The Foundation Pit" and "Only Short Time I'll Take Up from You", as well as the site-specific opera "Hometown Residents", created by the "Geometry of Sound" project team. All of them took place not in theatre halls, but at unusual venues in the city.
The site-specific theatre performance event "New Land", which featured the dance troupe of the Chamber Theatre, was highly assessed by the experts of the Russian National Theatre Award "Golden Mask" and entered the list of its nominees. In addition to the production by Anna Shchekleina, among the candidates for the award are nine performances from Moscow, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg and Voronezh.
The performance "New Land" reflects Platonov's pursuit of the space, the future, a foretaste of a beautiful high-tech and harmonious world, and at the same time a deep feeling of nature and unity with it, awareness of human loneliness as a moment of true freedom and self-expression.
The dance composition is based on mass and solo scenes and the use of the specifics of the space. The location creates multilevel perception, perspective and a sense of infinity. The drums create a sound accompaniment to the movement, emphasizing the tension and sharpness of the dance. The action is complemented by the remarks from Platonov's works ("The Lunar Bomb", "Impossible", "A Satan of Thought"), in which dreams of the future can be heard and his unique sense of nature is conveyed.
Tickets can be purchased on the website platonovfest.com, at the festival ticket offices, as well as at the ticket offices and on the website of the ticket operator kassir.ru.
Anna Shchekleina is an independent choreographer, a dancer, the laureate of the Russian National Theatre Award "the Golden Mask". Her first official work as a dancer was the international interdisciplinary project of the French company S'Poart, which united break dance and contemporary dancers in one performance "Na Grani". The premiere took place at the largest European festival Biennale de la danse in Lyon (France), after which the project successfully toured 35 cities in France for 2 years. Also, after graduation, she created her own brand Zonk’a together with Alexander Frolov. Her debut work as a choreographer "Zone of Proximity" was highly praised in the professional community and was presented at the anniversary festival of Russian dance theatres TSEKH in 2010.
Over 10 years of her professional activity, more than 20 dance performances and theatre performance events have been created, which were shown in 17 cities of Russia and 6 countries. The performances "My Love / My Life" and "Essence" became the nominees for the "The Golden Mask" Award. In 2020, the performance "Lilith", created for the dance project "Solyanka", won the Golden Mask Award in the nomination "Best Performance of Contemporary Dance".