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Ballet Stars Through the Lens
This project marks the start of collaboration between the Mikhailovsky Theatre and the Dmitry Likhachev Foundation.


One of the Foundation’s initiatives is a programme that invites artists from the USA to work in Russia. Having considered numerous applications in the fields of theatre, cinema, literature, museum activity, and cultural preservation, the Foundation’s experts decided to support a project by the American photographer Beowulf Sheehan. The celebrated photographer proposed a series that would reflect the city of St. Petersburg through the prism of ballet.

Beowulf Sheehan worked at the Mikhailovsky Theatre from 9 to 18 May. Over the course of those ten days more than 40 ballet dancers took part in the photo shoots. The models included the stars of the theatre’s ballet company: Irina Perren, Ekaterina Borchenko, Sabina Yapparova, Elvira Khabibullina, Vera Arbuzova, Marat Shemiunov, Nikolay Korypaev, Evgeny Deryabin, Alexander Omar and Andrey Kasyanenko. Besides the theatre's interiors, sessions also took place in the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Dostoevsky Museum, on the beach at the Peter and Paul Fortress, and on Vasilievsky Island Point. The photographer used the city’s potential to the full – from formal postcard views to the decaying interiors of abandoned palaces, interweaving these textures with classical ballet, and the modern choreography of Nacho Duato.

“It was a great honour for me to work with a high art such as ballet”, said Sheehan. “I’m grateful to the dancers for their trust and their boldness. I’m grateful to Vladimir Kekhman for allowing me to work in the theatre and for believing in my ideas. And I’m also grateful to Nacho Duato for permitting me to delve inside the artistic process and to sense the energy involved in the creation of a new ballet. My thanks to everyone who took part so willingly in my project: without you I would have been lost, and would not have felt so at home. I know that French is generally considered to be the language of ballet, but after the time I’ve spent in this theatre, I’m sure that language should be Russian.”

Beowulf Sheehan’s project in the Mikhailovsky Theatre, supported by the Dmitry Likhachev Foundation, is particularly timely given that 2012 has been declared the Year of the USA in Russia and Russia in the USA. The Mikhailovsky Theatre will perform in New York in 2012.