ON/OFF first online edition and the positive feedback which the project has got both from its Swiss participants and international dance curators as well as from the members of the Russian speaking dance community became a source of a huge inspiration. In the season of 2023-24 the project was continued, with the focus on offline activities: its next edition was held in France in September-December 2023 (residencies in Bordeaux and Nantes for the Russian speaking choreographers, with the participation of a dance-dramaturg and a filmmaker). In February 2024 ON/OFF collaborated with two major Swiss culture institutions - Geneva-based Festival Antigel and Théâtre Saint-Gervais Genève - in organizing the very special Showcase of Russian contemporary dance.
When Festival Antigel and Théâtre Saint-Gervais Genève approached ON/OFF founders Dina Khuseyn and Nika Parkhomovskaia, both of them immediately agreed to co-curate the very first Russian contemporary dance program in the frame of a well-known Swiss performance arts festival. The program of this showcase was built together by Gábor Varga, artistic collaborator at Arts Vivants & Made in Antigel, Sandrine Küster, director of Théâtre Saint-Gervais and ON/OFF dance exchange platform. The program includes two solo pieces - «Requiem» by a prominent Russian speaking choreographer Olga Tsvetkova, who studied in the Netherlands but decided to go back to Russia; «Fractional Step» by Tanya Tchizhikova which is a reflection or even an attempt to answer a question what it means to be Russian, - as well as a bigger-scale production of the «Breath» by Dina Khuseyn and Anna Garafeeva, nominated for the main Russian Theatre Prize «The Golden Mask» and depicting the impossibility to inhale freely in the times of war and censorship. All performances will be followed by the discussions with the audience and artists’ talks.
