VOICES Performing Arts Festival: All Planes are Flying to Minsk

VOICES Performing Arts Festival
The VOICES Performing Arts Festival is an independent platform that represents the voices of displaced artists who have to find new ways to be heard. It explores how an artist's identity can transcend geographical boundaries and whether displaced artists can redefine themselves in a new cultural context and enrich it.

This year's music, theater and dane productions focus on artists from countries of the former USSR.

All Planes are Flying to Minsk
with Neue Vocalsolisten
A musical homage to the 2020 protests in Belarus, featuring multidisciplinary performance and premieres by three (exiled) Belarusian composers.

The first part is a multidisciplinary performance about civil resistance, synthesizing four distinct mediums: poetry, music, choreography, and scenography. At the heart of the performance is a cantata written by Vladimir Rannev in 2020 in response to the protests in Belarus and their suppression. Rannev's cantata consists of eleven independent songs, each set to a poem by Belarusian playwright and poet Konstantin Steshik.

Vladimir Rannev, composer: "The political events that served as the impetus for the creation of the cantata also influenced its musical language – these are songs, democratic in their musical language, which, despite the obvious stylistic differences, remind us of the songs of Kurt Weill and their stage life in the performances of Bertolt Brecht."

The second part features premieres by the three (exiled) Belarusian composers, who portraytheir homeland in the time following the brutal suppression of the civil protests.

With the Neuen Vocalsolisten: Susanne Leitz-Lorey (sopran), Truike van der Poel (mezzosopran), Daniel Gloger (Countertenor) Martin Nagy (tenor), Andreas Fischer (bass) and Choreographer and Performer Anna Abalikhina (Choreographer/Performer) and Ksenia Peretrukhina (Visual Artist).

Neue Vokalsolisten
The singers of the Neuen Vocalsolisten see themselves as explorers and discoverers: in exchange with composers, they are constantly searching for new forms of vocal expression. One focus is on collaboration with artists who virtuously exploit the possibilities of digital media, with an interest in networking, in playing with genres, in dissolving space, perspectives and functions. Thus, idiosyncratic interdisciplinary formats between music theater, performance, installation and concert staging characterize the projects of the ensemble.

Vladimir Rannev
Rannev graduated from the composition department of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 2003, composes both acoustic and electroacoustic music, which has been performed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Finland, Japan, and the USA by various ensembles. Rannev also works in theater, where he took part in numerous staging projects in several theaters, such as Alexandrinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg) and the Theatre Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). His opera Two Acts, with a libretto by Dmitri A. Prigov, premiered at the Hermitage Museum (with Ensemble Mosaik and conductor Enno Poppe) and won the Grand Prix of the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize in 2013. The opera Drillalians was nominated for the National Theatre Golden Mask Prize in 2016, and the opera Prose was awarded with that prize in 2019.

Anna Abalikhina
Anna Abalikhina graduated from the Moscow Choreographic Lyceum and the Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands. She has worked with the Dutch company Galili Dance and the German company In-Jung and has participated in projects by Rodolfo Leoni and Anouk van Dijk. She has collaborated with numerous drama and music theaters, contemporary art festivals, and laboratories, working with renowned drama directors. She was a resident artist at the American Dance Festival. In her interdisciplinary projects, she explores the synthesis of dance and media technology, interactive video, and sound. She collaborates with composers, video artists, programmers, and engineers. As a guest choreographer, she actively works with drama and opera theaters, as well as contemporary art museums and galleries.

Ksenia Peretrukhina
Ksenia Peretrukhina has worked as a visual artist, presenting her work in solo and group exhibitions and participating in various projects both in Russia and abroad. Her exhibitions have taken place in cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Hanover, Paris, New York, and others. Since 2005, Peretrukhina has also worked as a stage designer for drama productions. Peretrukhina is the laureate of the “Innovation” contemporary art prize (2020) and has been nominated for the “Black Square” contemporary art prize and the “Kandinsky” art prize. She is also a multiple nominee and winner of the “Golden Mask” National Theatre Prize (2013, 2018, 2019).

Sunday, November 24
Start 5 pm / Doors 4:30 pm
Kuppelhalle
Tickets