This platform exemplifies the four most critical components of proper digital humanities projects: housing a special collection, exhibition of material from that collection, the means for international collaboration, and the use of a search engine. At the heart of every Digital Humanities project is collaboration and bringing scholarship into public domain. Accordingly, I have invited scholars from Performance Studies, Gender Studies, anthropology and post-Soviet studies to write essays about performance art, singular events, performative actions, protest performance, and everyday social practices across the Central and Eastern European region and to interpret these actions for social messages. This section will expand to address performance art in Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Russia.
Dying Swan fights for human rights: a case from recent Russian history
Elena Yushkova
Excerpts from the article published in Forum Modernes Theater, Volume 29, Numbers 1-2, 2014 (2018), pp. 108-116:
Protest movements in contemporary Russia are being seriously threatened by the state. Nevertheless, some street performances in the last few years have become milestones of artistic resistance to growing authoritarianism. Young talented artists performed all of these actions, although the level of challenge was different – from shocking to public morality to just ironic and theatrical. Between two of the most striking performances: by Pussy Riot in 2012 and Pavel Pavlensky in 2016, there was one less provocative and less resonant performance, created by Amnesty International. It was shown in January 2014 in Moscow and was entitled Dying Swan. The young performer Alexandra Portyannikova danced the famous piece, first staged by the Russian choreographer Michael Fokine in 1907, with handcuffs on her arms in the open air, when the temperature was below -20°C. The performance aimed to draw the attention of the audience to the situation of human rights and freedoms in Russia. All these performances strongly criticized the Russian political regime by means of epatage, challenge and shock.
The latter performance had many connotations in Russian art and political history, and, equally importantly, did not have any personal consequences for the performer (such as jail or trial). It did not break the law and could not be considered simply as hooliganism, but, unfortunately, it did not attract mass attention in Russia or the world. This performance used legal opportunities for expressing protest. Portyannikova opened the performance by carrying a banner with Putin’s own words: “One of the priorities for the state and society should be support to the human rights movement.” His words seemed to be a mockery because reality showed the opposite to be true.
Moscow authorities permitted this performance to be conducted far away from the crowded sites of the city – at Yauzskie Vorota Square – instead of near the monument to the heroes of Plevna (the site chosen by Amnesty) where a bigger audience could have watched the performance. At the authorized deserted square only several policemen, journalists, and representatives of Amnesty International were among the audience. The case of Pussy Riot had created a precedent, which made the authorities suspicious of all kinds of theatrical-political protest activities. The performer explained her understanding of these circumstances: “Our climate does not favor street actions; the only recognizable image of a dancer is a swan, and authorization could be given only to a performance at an empty place where nobody but journalists could see it.” However, thanks to Youtube, the performance was watched more than several thousand times, although this amount is incommensurable with the resonance of Pussy Riot’s “punk-service” and Pavlensky’s self-harming actions.
Although she is not a classical ballerina, Portyannikova’s training allowed her to perform the famous piece, “Dying Swan.” She is a product of the tempestuous development of contemporary dance in Russia. Portyannikova graduated from a new experimental department of contemporary dance at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg that was opened in the early 2000s. Together with her colleague, Daria Plokhova, she created a group called “dance cooperative” Aisedorino Gore, which means the Grief of Isadora Duncan and, at the same time, is a play on the title of the famous children’s book by Korney Chukovsky, Fedorino Gore.
Since the early Putin era, dance developed very fast and reflected the formation of the new Russian man – free-thinking, creative, open to the world, and interacting with numerous new trends. Contemporary dance became a serious alternative to ballet, which was perceived as an old-fashioned, dead formalistic art unable to express the dramatic change in mentality. Contemporary dance developed in small amateur groups and became so noticeable that the magazine Ballet wrote about it in every issue in the 1990s. Festivals of contemporary dance took place in many cities in Russia and in the nearby countries (the most popular was held in Vitebsk, in the former USSR Republic of Belorussia).
The huge mass protests of 2011 – 2012 in Russia were the last attempts of society to oppose the limitless power of Putin. Political actions in 2013 had less resonance and led to mass arrests and lawsuits against protesters. Under these circumstances, the artistic resistance acquired new functions: to wake society and to criticize the regime when, supposedly, there is no other way to do it (except on the Internet). Artists can express the idea of Adorno that “[i]t should be different– even when there is no seemingly apparent alternative to that.” The performer “can criticize untenable ideological positions and dissolve patterns of order and doctrines of any kind,” being protected by his/her scenic images even when acting on the street.
In current Russian political conditions dance can be a very effective form of saying something which cannot be expressed with words thanks to its huge symbolic potential. The Swan in handcuffs successfully represented the death of possibilities for any democratic development in the near future. This short requiem to freedom performed without an audience in terrible weather was a theatrical critique accepted even in authoritarian Russia since the critical part was not straightforward but hidden under the layers of historical and aesthetic connotations.