ARTEM HORDIEIEV
Two schools, one direction
I was formed by the Ukrainian creative school: structure, narrative, large casts, the discipline of big projects and productions. Alongside the work, I took daily class in the Vaganova method. The rest I learned from my New York colleagues: four years of daily class in Complexions and Balanchine technique with the teachers of Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson's company, and a role in The Great Gatsby, choreographed by Rhoden. My movement language sits at the meeting point of those two schools, and that is exactly the line I bring to the French stage: European depth with an American engine.
Since May 2026 I have lived in France, and I do one thing only — ballet.
2007 → 2026
Rhoden · Richardson · Complexions
- The classical school — Vaganova, 2007–2012, daily class with Ihor Taranushchenko, a student of Boris Bregvadze; then the principals' class at the National Opera with Serhii Bondur.
- Ballet direction — Karpenko-Kary, 2011–2015. Original libretti and staging concepts, and a platform for choreographic research across stage, film and television formats.
- Scale — state ceremonies and arenas: up to 10,000 spectators, 282 athletes from 30 countries, delegates from over 70 states.
- Complexions technique, Alvin Ailey technique and the Balanchine method — 2014–2018, daily, with the Complexions Contemporary Ballet team, Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson's company.
- The Great Gatsby, choreographed by Rhoden: dancer in the company, cast at the audition led by Rhoden and Denis Matvienko. World premiere at the Ukraina Palace, Kyiv, 2014; Paris, Folies Bergère — October 2017.
- Company mindset — the production is built to stand on its own and play anywhere in the world. The project is still touring; my part in it ended in 2018.
A cast where three schools met: the Complexions stars from New York, the principals of the classical school led by Denis Matvienko, and independent artists from Ukraine, each one hand-picked. Original music by Konstantin Meladze. The production became the most successful ballet in Ukrainian history and is still touring.
2013–2022: what was built
Since 2013 the producer Tetiana Hordieieva and I have been building our own company. There was no state support for a choreographer to work full-time in Ukraine, so we earned the money where the money was on the post-Soviet market: large television productions and state events, with the biggest producers of entertainment talent shows, StarLightMedia among them. In parallel I never let go of the practice — daily ballet class, body, meditative and dance practice, Gaga technique, in Kyiv and in Senegal.
Out of that process came the production ANIMA — premiered at the Kyiv Opera, and my graduation piece. By 2019 we had assembled a large team: in Kyiv the pre-production of the international tour of MOZART 25 and THE ANTS was finished. The premiere and the tour stood ready to go.
The project was postponed twice. First the pandemic. Then russia's full-scale invasion. Tetiana, what was left of the team — five to eight dancers — and I ended up in Central Asia, and worked there from 2022 to 2026. In May 2026 we moved to France to devote ourselves entirely to ballet and theatre production.
Nineteen years inside the hardest vertical there is: live broadcast, state ceremonies, arenas of ten thousand and up, and tens of millions in front of television screens.
Constant, parallel work with a method of my own. The phenomenology of the working field and of theatre dramaturgy. My work is to bring the group's phenomenological knowledge onto the stage, into the light.
Systemic constellations after Bert Hellinger, since 2013, learned from the inside — to adapt them into a choreographic and dramaturgical tool. My graduation thesis is on it.
The ICARE project holds both strategies in one evening: part one is a fixed, composed structure. Part two is born of the city, its people and its artistic milieu. On top of the finished concept of the ballet, we develop exactly what wants to be born in your city.
Seven works, taken through pre-production
Igor Markevitch wrote L'Envol d'Icare in 1932 for Serge Lifar. Lifar refused: he could not bring his own rhythm into accord with the score, and in 1935 staged his own Icare with no music at all — to rhythms he set himself, the percussion added only after the choreography was finished. Markevitch's score has never been staged. Markevitch and Lifar were both born in Kyiv. The composer's own version is for two pianos and three percussionists: seven movements, 27 minutes. Bartók heard it; it is believed to have shaped his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.
MOZART 25 and THE ANTS went through pre-production — Kyiv, 2019. The premiere and the touring were postponed by the pandemic and then russia's full-scale invasion. The works have stayed ready to go.