© Gerard Payelle, Doriane Rio
Swan Lake Solo
In Swan Lake Solo, there are neither white birds nor princes. In collaboration with composer Anton Svetlichny, Olga Dukhovnaya proposes her own version of Swan Lake, to turn this classical ballet into a modern performance.
Let’s clear up any ambiguity: Swan Lake Solo is not Princess Odette’s solo, nor is it a contemporary version of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. Swan Lake Solo is a topical dance show. On 9 March 2022, the front page of the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta featured the silhouettes of four ballerinas from Swan Lake against the background of a nuclear explosion. Since the fall of Gorbachev, television has broadcast Tchaikovsky’s ballet whenever the news gets too hot.
The war dealt a final blow to her project after two years of lockdown: Olga Dukhovnaya gave up the idea of choreographing Swan Lake for 32 dancers, an orchestra and singers, commissioned by the new Moscow museum. In an undertaking of ecological deconstruction, the Ukrainian choreographer then concentrated the entire corps de ballet in that of a single performer: herself.
Together with Russian composer Anton Svetlichny, the duo tuned it to Tchaikovsky’s music that was as playful as it was respectful. An essential and dynamic dance show was born from all these constraints, giving Swan Lake Solo the tones of joyful and delightful freedom.
Credits
Olga Dukhovna Choreographer & performer
François Malbranque Performer
Anton Svetlichny Sound score
Guillaume Jouin Lighting
Marion Regnier Costume
François Maurisse Outside eye
Denis Malard Stage management
Amélie-Anne Chapelain Production manager
Enora Floc’h Production assistant
Production C.A.M.P
Co-production le Quartz – Scène Nationale de Brest, Au bout du plongeoir & la Coopération Nantes-Rennes-Brest-Rouen - Itinéraires d’artiste(s). With the support of the Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis and of the DRAC Bretagne. Thanks to CCNRB – Collectif FAIR-E for the studio space.
Olga Dukhovna
Born in Ukraine, Olga Dukhovna received her training at the P.A.R.T.S school in Brussels, under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and later at the National Center for Contemporary Dance in Angers under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh. She moved to France and embarked on an intensive collaboration with Boris Charmatz while pursuing her own research.
As a choreographer, she navigates the intersection of incompatible artistic approaches while exploring creative clashes and unexpected collisions. On one hand, she draws inspiration from a lost Ukrainian folklore erased by the Soviet regime, reinterpreting its movements ; on the other hand, she incorporates elements from the contemporary dance legacy that she kept from her studies in Belgium and France. Out of this confrontation, two pieces emerged: Korowod (2012), based on traditional Slavic dances, and Hopak (2024), inspired by the military training of the Cossacks. Removing these ancestral gestures to question their meaning, she reenacts them with a political resonance!
Her collaboration with Boris Charmatz's Museum of Dance has influenced her perspective on what she terms "recycling", a key element in her work. She explores how gestures from the collective memory of world wild dance are appropriated and transformed. A show the law will consider as mine addresses this aspect in the form of a danced lecture with a copyright law researcher on stage. Looking ahead to 2027, she is preparing a new group piece on these choreographic heritage aspects.
During the pandemic, she created Swan Lake a solo piece entirely crafted in her room by watching excerpts of many different version of Swan Lake on YouTube. Since 2022, Swan Lake has enjoyed rapid success and initiated an international tour. The piece originates from a childhood memory: in the ex-Soviet bloc countries, whenever a leader died, programs were interrupted to broadcast Swan Lake. Today, Olga explains that she dances Swan Lake while awaiting news of the fall of the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.
This reversed logic, humorously referred to as "magical thinking," is another driving force in her choreographic research. Infused with audacious vitality, Olga Dukhovnaya's dance confronts forgotten or mutilated narratives with the challenges of history. She also holds the conviction that if a culture disappears, it falls upon artists to reinvent it.
Olga Dukhovna has been awarded the DanceWeb Sponsorship (Austria); from the Aerowaves platform (Dublin), and won the Danse Élargie competition (Paris). Since 2023, she is an associated artist at the Théâtre Louis Aragon in Tremblay-en-France. Passionate about transmission, she also teaches at the University of Rennes. All her projects are produced by the production structure C.A.M.P.