From December 10 to 16, 2020, the XIX International Dance Open Ballet Festival will be held in St. Petersburg with the state support of the Culture Committee of the Russian Federation. The performances will take place on the stage of the Baltic House Theater on December 10, 12 and 14 Gala performance will be held at the Oktyabrsky Big Concert Hall on December 16, 2020 The performances start at 7 pm.
The Dance Open Festival keeps going at all costs, despite the circumstances. Once again, the best Russian ballet performers are getting together in St. Petersburg. There will not be a single less-than- stellar performance. The audience will once again see not only modern choreography and avant-garde ballets, but the classics of the genre as well.
December 10, 2020, saw the opening of the festival with the one-act ballets program "URAL INTRO" by one of the best Russian ballet companies. The performances of Vyacheslav Samodurov's The Order of the King, Anton Pimonov's Brahms Party and George Balanchine's Walpurgis Night can normally be seen in Yekaterinburg only. These are three examples of academic dance, which is both modern, vivid and spectacular art.
"Walpurgis Night" by George Balanchine is 18 minutes of celebrating transformations: without witch entourage and fake devilry, but with that pagan, victorious passion of non-canonical pas.
The Order of the King reminds dreamers of the brilliant era of Versailles ballets, and adds the actual gold of sunny grand pas to the gray Petersburg winter. Virtuoso, daring and rich choreography by Vyacheslav Samodurov and music by Anatoly Korolev merge in mathematically perfect dance scenes. St. Petersburg audience could not but pay homage to the virtuoso troupe. Right after that the viewers got immersed in a different context, in a different time, but the topic remained the same: the inspiration to live.
Brahms Party by Anton Pimonov to music from the Liebeslieder Waltzes cycles by Johannes Brahms is both a new mesmerizing vocabulary (for connoisseurs) and pure aesthetic pleasure (for ballet lovers). Here is a male dance with a power that has everything to it: depth and humor, energy and precision, flexibility and plot. But instead of pathos there is irony with tints of hooliganism, instead of heroes - ordinary guys dancing a concert class.
On December 12, the festival presents the premiere of Vladimir Vasiliev's play "Anyuta" by performed by the Perm Ballet. In 1982, a television masterpiece was released in Russia. It was the ballet film "Anyuta" after Anton Chekhov's sparkling and dramatic play "Anna on the Neck". The film was created by three Masters - the composer Valery Gavrilin, the director Alexander Belinsky and the choreographer Vladimir Vasiliev. It was created for Ekaterina Maximova, the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater.
Dance Open is proud to present in its program an updated version of the ballet "Anyuta". This performance is imbued with Chekhov's magic of deafening "silence", when the main thing lies in implications. Everything is talentedly combined here: both text and choreography, the plot on stage and plot in life. 
December 14, 2020, will see a powerful production of Jeroen Verbruggen's "Dance Floor" performed by the Ballet Moscow Theater. 
“I wanted to do something about dancing. Lots of people dance - be it ballet, or nightclubs, or ritual dances. I loved the idea that dancing is medicine, but it can destroy you if you don't stop in time. The dance can be incredibly beautiful and just as dark at the same time,” - the choreographer points out. 
On December 16, 2020, the audience will enjoy Gala concert of Dance Open stars. This time it will take place in the Big Concert Hall "Oktyabrsky". According to the concept, this should be the most touching and emotional event of the festival. Typically, such concerts are performed by world ballet stars, whose names are kept secret until the last moment. Despite the predicaments and limitations of the present circumstances, all the first stars will appear.
During the festival, an exhibition of the Russian ballet photography star, Alexander Yakovlev, is held in the entrance hall of the Baltic House theater. The photo artist has been working with dancers of the Bolshoi Theater, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, Boris Eifman Dance Theater and many other troupes from this country and abroad.
“Photography should be primarily perceived as an unsaid movement, the continuation of which we already visualize ourselves, see in our imagination,” - Alexander Yakovlev says.