April 20th, 2016
Off to Russia: Yesterday the Technical Crew arrived in St. Petersburg and unloaded everything for the technical set-up. Today we started our journey at 6 am in the morning and are now relieved to be finally here. In 2013 the Semperoper Ballet was already part of the international Ballet Festival »Dance Open« and now we are honored to dance for this event in St. Petersburg again – one of the most important cities in ballet history. The schedule for all the preparations until the general rehearsal is very tight but our tour manager Frank Seifert has got everything under control. The lights were adjusted and the costumes and props were sorted. We are ready to put our dancing socks on and get it started.
April 21st, 2016
Today is the day: For the second time we will participate at the »Dance Open«. We will perform »Tanzsuite« of Alexei Ratmansky, Pontus Lidberg’s »Im anderen Raum« and furthermore Alexander Ekman’s »Cacti«. Although the schedules here are very tight, we had some time to explore the city. St. Petersburg is like you it expect to be: big, decadent and cold! While Dresden is in bloom and full of spring flair, the thermometer in St. Petersburg is going up to 7 degree Celsius maximum. Luckily we are prepared for this cold weather. At 6.00 pm we will get our make-up done. Just like on our tour to Paris we have our own make-up team from Dresden here. They give us the finishing touch before the performance will start at 7 pm.
April 22nd, 2016
Thank you, St. Petersburg for this fantastic evening. We are very grateful to have been a part of »Dance Open« Festival this year. Our time in St. Petersburg was short but very intense and we soaked up as much input as possible. Today we are traveling back to Dresden and rest our feet a little. On Sunday we have another performance of »Sleeping Beauty«. But there is not much time to settle down again because we will go to Antwerp/ Belgium in two weeks to perform at deSingel. Stay tuned about our next reports!