The Norilsk Seasons program starts in April in the Krasnoyarsk Territory

The Krasnoyarsk Territory will host the Norilsk Seasons festival, which will allow northerners to see performances by directors who are changing Russian theater.

The organizers of the contemporary art festival “Norilsk Seasons”, which takes place in the northern capital for the second year in a row with the support of Norilsk Nickel, have developed a program in such a way that Norilsk residents can see Russian theater in all its diversity. The screenings will take place on the stage of the Polar Drama Theater named after Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Start of the festival April 21 and 22 will be given by the documentary work of the Moscow Mayakovsky Theater “The Search Continues.” The performance was created by director Dmitry Krestyankin with the participation of the LizaAlert search and rescue team. It is based on real stories about teenagers who find themselves in difficult situations.

The second block of tours will take place in the fall. September 12 and 13 in Norilsk will show the performance of the Moscow Theater for Young Spectators “Honeymoon in the Doll's House” directed by Pyotr Shereshevsky. He took Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House” and rewrote it together with the actors, so that the characters’ dialogues, invented almost a century and a half ago, sounded with new strength and relevance.

October 2 and 3 in Norilsk will present a unique “Ballet Evening” performed by dancers of the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater named after Leonid Yakobson. Only Norilsk residents will see the program in this form.

The performance will begin with “Brilliant Divertimento” – ballet miniatures by Leonid Yakobson himself, who composed an homage to the dance of the 18th century. The next part is “598 bars” staged by Vyacheslav Samodurov, one of the main Russian choreographers working in the neoclassical style. And the evening will end with the Grand pas from the ballet Paquita, choreographed by Marius Petipa and Leonid Yakobson, which invariably becomes the main decoration of ballet galas all over the world.

A special educational program of the festival occupies a special place.

“Today Norilsk is a city in which new artistic expressions are born, based on local experience and identity. An important part of the festival will be a documentary theater laboratory led by Dmitry Krestyankin, which naturally scales up into a permanent theater studio for teenagers in Norilsk. This is one example of how citizen participation becomes the basis for system formats. We see creative industries as part of the real economy, for which there is a growing demand in cities. That is why the key task is to create institutions and tools that provide incentives and opportunities for young, talented and creative authors to realize themselves and connect their future with the city,” said Larisa Gennadievna Zelkova, senior vice president of Norilsk Nickel.

A theater studio led by Dmitry Krestyankin will open for teenagers April 23. Artists and teachers from Norilsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg will work with the children. The result will be an open screening of a sketch of the play at the end of May.

Another laboratory will be held with 4 to 12 September. Leading Russian choreographers Alexei Narutto and Olga Timoshenko will conduct master classes on various modern dance techniques with elements of martial arts and sports games. Participants, under the guidance of choreographers, will create their own plastic performance.

Let us remind you that the first “Norilsk Seasons” took place in 2025. Norilsk residents were able to attend a two-hour concert “Fairy Tales by Notes” performed by the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia named after Evgeniy Svetlanov, the legendary production of “Wolves and Sheep” by the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater and the musical fairy tale “The Town Musicians of Bremen” by the Mossovet Theater. The educational program included creative meetings, master classes, a laboratory on the Theater of the Object by Mikhail Plutakhin and a laboratory on the “theater of citizens” under the direction of director Dmitry Krestyankin. The festival became a bright cultural event in the life of the city and laid the foundation for the further development of the region.