‘Petruschka’, the Russian word for parsley, is also the name of a traditional Russian puppet character who came to prominence in the early 20th century when he was reimagined in the 1911 ballet ‘Petruschka’ by the Ballets Russes. This ballet navigated a space between Westernised aesthetics and peripheral cultural motifs, embodying a complex interplay of modernity and exoticized Russianness. In her contemporary reactivation of Petrushka, post-Soviet dance artist Sasha Portyannikova uses this historically charged figure to examine her own position as a choreographer living and working in Western Europe, especially in light of the shrinking political freedoms in Russia and the ongoing war against Ukraine.

Through a journey across various movement languages, Portyannikova questions Eurocentric classifications of avant-garde and classical choreography. She asks what the canon of modern dance might look like if seen from its cultural margins rather than its Western centre. As part of the performance, the audience is engaged in a participatory question card game, where they navigate personal and collective dilemmas related to migration, foreignness, and geopolitical conflict. This interactive layer deepens the experience, turning spectators into critical participants in a performance that blurs the boundaries between art, politics, and lived reality.

In life we fall. We fall in love, we stumble, we get hurt, heartbroken, we experience fall as a season when the leaves fall. But falling can also be an act of acceptance, of giving in and letting go, of accepting gravity and our relation to the earth’s centre. How many times can we fall in life? And what gets us back on our feet?

‘Echoes of Resistance’ is a solo that works primarily with the concept of resilience. In times of crises, one strives to understand the path to survival. Resilience is both an inherent strength that we possess and one that we have to conquer. It encompasses the capacity to recover quickly from setbacks, to spring back into shape.

We see a body in a constant loop of falling, an expression of the many times and ways we fall in life. It focuses on ways to defy gravity: floating, balancing, fully letting go, rebounding, sinking. It looks for a continuous physicality that resembles the tumbles of life and eventually leads to perseverance in the face of exhaustion. It also bears witness to the realisation that sometimes, to get back on our feet, we need to let go.