July 17 will be the day of premiere of the audiovisual performance “Ledges”. This unique project in site-specific format is a collaboration of the community theater and modern theater experts. You can see how unusual this project is not only from its genre, but from the very idea of the performance, its realization, and the future venue. More on this in an interview with the project’s director and producer Ivan Minevtsev.

“Ivan, we saw the performance sketches created during Refractories Theater Laboratory not so long ago. Are you working on a new experiment in collaboration with Satka and Magnezit Group now?”

“Having been absorbed in the town’s and Magnezit’s life for quite some time, after making a theater laboratory, I understood that we don’t need anything usual or average. I mean, putting together a theater group, choosing a play, assigning roles, and making a stage performance with the locals – all this would not be interesting for the people of Satka or me. That’s why we decided to have an experimental project, completely groundbreaking, as avantgarde as Magnezit itself.

Satka is one of the few towns in our country that attracts artists and inspires creativity. Both the enterprise and the town are very open to art, including modern one. That’s why we decided to collaborate with the Satkinskiy District Development Assistance Fund, with support from Magnezit Group, to make quite an unusual gift for Metallurgist Day – an audiovisual performance based on a story of one of the Magnezit dynasties. And continuity of generations is very important both for the enterprise and for the town. These are not just empty words. Even we, working in Satka not for the first time, feel like we are a part of a big hard-working family.”

“Can you tell us now what dynasty you are talking about, what family history gave life to the performance?”

“Yes. It is about the Navolokin family, whose collective employment record is 820 years – what a crazy number! We’ve taken their story and used it as the foundation of our performance about people who, with their energy, power, their labor, talent and perseverance, work “in the field”, making products with their own hands. After speaking to the dynasty members, playwright Yekaterina Guzyoma wrote the song lyrics and monologues, composer Pavel Polyakov wrote music specifically for the project that will come to life thanks to his colleagues from Waldgang Art Group and will accompany the whole performance. They are responsible for the entire sound part of the performance. They are already working on it with local choirs.

We’ve gathered a choir of one hundred people, some of whom are actually related to the Navolokin family. Opera singer Tatiana Bikmukhametova will also take part in our performance, she is from this big family of Magnezitians too.

The choir is very important, because it is a powerful collective of people, like a big family, like an enterprise team, that works at a difficult, harsh production facility.”

“Your performance is audiovisual – what will the audience see and hear?”

“This is a very unconventional performance, very musical, choral, with interesting visuals. These are contributions by artist Varvara Ivanik, video artists Anton Slastnikov and Dmitry Ivanchenko. We have a lot of footage from the industrial site of Magnezit Group, we’ve filmed almost every one of the production processes. They are incredibly impressive! You, people from Magnezit, may be used to them, but for us these are unique phenomena, especially the mine, Karagay quarry. We will show the plasticity of some processes on stage, choreographer Natalia Shurganova is working on it. This way the production will become integral to the performance. The giant iron wall in Hangar – former garage for BelAZ trucks – will become a screen onto which we will project the video.

Finally, all parts of the performance will be joined together in a musical and visual action. Of course, the performance is not a light experience, just like the labor of factory workers, but I assure you, it is fantastic. We know what we do and we will amaze you.”

“Projects like this need to mature, and Satka has just the right “soil” for it: people of the district are already familiar with a variety of modern theater practices. And not only as spectators, but also as participants. What do you think created the conditions for “Ledges” to appear?”

“Magnezit Group’s systematic work with art. Both the enterprise and the town are filled with art in its most broad sense. It is everywhere: in landscaping, in very cool street art, in installations... It is great that you have chosen this path. And it is entirely logical that the new unique work of art is being created in Satka. We can’t really make judgments about it yet, but I’m sure that “Ledges” will be a one-of-a-kind project. Such performances are rare for Russia, if there even are any. And no one has ever made any like ours. No one has ever had a choir sing parts written specifically for a hundred people in the garage for BelAZ trucks (and not only in the garage!)”

“And is the Hangar’s acoustics suitable for your ideas?”

“Yes! Sounds fill it like a vessel! This place is absolutely not made for such projects, but this very thing is its value for a unique product. And when it sounds, when this quite strange place fills with the voices of townsfolk and the sounds of manufacturing processes, this will be an unforgettable experience for the audience.”

“What would you wish or recommend the audience and the participants before the premiere?”

“I think the audience needs to come and just relax. For an hour, they will be under a lot of “pressure” – musical, visual, emotional. And you should not fight this “pressure”. The performance itself is hard labor too, after which we will open the doors and let in some air. So, in the end, we will reach happiness and we will start breathing differently, as the air around us will be different.

This is a story about hearth and home, about feelings we have when we are with family. Returning to our family after work, we switch to a very light, kind, fresh emotion – to clear voice. You will understand what I’m talking about when you hear the final song performed by Tatiana Bikmukhametova. With her clear voice, like a string, she will somewhat draw a line at the 50th minute of the laborious journey we, the participants and the audience, will go and live through together, finally receiving good new experience, developing new neural pathways.

And my wish to the participants before they start: keep calm and enjoy choral singing, which should be really pleasurable, especially in such an unusual space and with such acoustic and visual dynamics we will create. I myself dream of going to the stage and singing together with the performance team, for everyone to experience this unreal feeling of unity with each other that choir gives. Because you become closer with a person when you are singing side by side. This is too an effect of big family. Singing is immensely important in Russian families and Russian art. When we sing with our entire family, in a choir, it is a mesmerizing feeling.”

“And my last question: is the title of the performance motivated by the “graphics” of Karagay quarry near the Hangar?”

“Yes. Ledges are the quarry itself. Its magnitude, power, and depth are man-made. Every ledge shows human labor, time required to create something important. The quarry is like a time spiral, its ledges are fragments of life and work of every member of the big family of Magnezit.”

Authors of the performance: director Ivan Minevtsev, designer Varvara Ivanik, composer and performers Pavel Polyakov and Waldgang Art Group, video artists Anton Slastnikov and Dmitry Ivanchenko, choreographer Natalia Shurganova, playwright Yekaterina Guzyoma.

Participants of the project: members of the Navolokin dynasty, workers and veterans of Satka Production Site of Magnezit Group, choir teams of the district and participants of Refractories Theater Laboratory.

Admission is by invitation, transfer will be provided for the guests.

Source: Magnezitovets.