Mercy

Contemporary trio | Piece for the promotion examination | Lviv National Opera

The Silence of the Pandemic

The pandemic split the Lviv ballet company into seven isolated groups of five or six dancers. Ensemble work became impossible. Wandering through an empty Kyiv, the choreographer ran into the paradox of the human condition: people sealed in their apartments, and the absolute silence of the streets. That feeling became a vision. At his own expense, without institutional support, he went to Lviv and created Mercy — a small production that raised corps de ballet dancers to the rank of leading soloists at the promotion examination. This dance is a manifesto of what survives when almost everything has been taken from a person.

Max Richter · Voices · The Chain of Meaning

Choreographed to music by Max Richter from the album Voices (2020). The work was inspired by the historic reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948. The Declaration, in turn, draws on the Roerich Pact — the first international treaty protecting cultural property in armed conflict, signed in Washington in 1935. A ballet born of pandemic isolation, set to music about human rights, rooted in a treaty that placed culture above military necessity. A project with the potential for a large-scale staging.