Feminine Futures : Ukraine (16)

This event is Free-Ticketed

War | Oppression | Dystopia conference/film-screening by Adrien Sina

Conceived in 2020 by Adrien Sina, dance historian and curator of the exhibitions Feminine Futures, the series War | Oppression | Dystopia is prolonged at the Centre Pompidou with this event especially conceived in tribute to the Ukrainian artists.

War | Oppression | Dystopia with its white shadow Peace | Freedom | Utopia was first conceived by Adrien Sina in a pre-war period, as a contemporary component of his Feminine Futures exhibitions anticipating future tragedies. It has acquired dramatic urgency with Russia’s inhumane aggression towards Ukraine. Premonitory dances in devastated sites, collective dynamics affected by undetermined dangers, dances of love and tolerance, were then associated with unseen new dances performed in the midst of the destruction of war, leading to the highest level of creation, emotion or abstraction surpassing cruel realities.

With choreographies and dances by Vladyslav Detiuchenko, Svitlana Oleksiuk, Anna Gerus, Konstantin Koval, Liza Riabinina, Irina Bashuk, Inna Matiushyna, Olya Shevchuk, Nadia Tomazenko, Sofia Naumenko, Alisa Makarenko, Natalia Trafankowska, Anastasiya Kharchenko, Kate Luzan, Alina Kobilyak, Gelya Andryushina, Olena Meshcheriakova, Alona Stoliarova, Anton Obukhovskiy, Zhenya Goncharenko.

Of the 27 Ukrainian choreographers selected many have chosen to remain in Ukraine enduring missile attacks on civilians, some are journeying among us. Unreleased short films are in process with dances on cultural heritage sites or architecture damaged, destroyed or threatened by the war, catalysed by the prospect of this exhibition.

Following a presentation at the Venice Biennale in June 2022, the film programme will be screened at the Hors Pistes / Off Tracks Festival, Centre Pompidou, Paris, on 27 January, and at The Courtauld, London, on 17 February 2023. The related exhibition is scheduled at Summerhall’s War Memorial Gallery, from February to March 2023.

This contemporary survey will be briefly introduced by a historical reflexion on Dance and War, one of the major themes of Feminine Futures, with dances by Valentine de Saint-Point, Giannina Censi, Mary Wigman, Julia Marcus, Myra Kinch, Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow and Pauline Koner.

Adrien Sina is a dance historian, curator of the exhibitions Feminine Futures – Biennale Performa / Institut Culturel Italien, New York, 2009-2010, and The Consortium, Dijon, 2014; Feminine Futures – The Membrane of the Dream I/II at the Museum Langmatt, Baden, 2015. His researches have contributed to Inventing Abstraction at MoMA New York, 2013; Elles font l’Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou, 2021-2022; The Milk of Dreams at The Venice Biennale, 2022. After Feminine Futures (2011), his book Feminine Futures 2 : Expression / Abstraction – The Membrane of Dreams, Avant-garde Expressive and Abstract Dance Through Photography and Experimental Film, will be released (2023, Presses du réel).