The frame is set, let the show begin. The big tent, set by famous German circus Sarrasani, rises nearly as high as Festspielhaus Hellerau. It is the perfect place for DEREVO’s multi award winning performance LA DIVINA COMMEDIA which has been amazed audiences in similar tent surroundings in Holland, Scotland, Poland and Hungary, but never in Germany.

Ticket sales are running. DEREVO with it’s two bases in St. Petersburg and Dresden has hooked up with European Centre of the arts Hellerau and Kulturzentrum Scheune to give a signal not only for Festspielhaus Hellerau. VERTICAL 2005 continues what started as VERTICAL 2004 last September in St. Petersburg and is now on the way to become a fixed institution: A yearly festival combining theatre, performance, music, film and visual arts and intended to build bridges between the partner towns of St. Petersburg and Dresden.

A dozen young artists from different parts of Russia, members of DEREVO Laboratory in St. Petersburg, will open the festival evenings with their performance „ARKAN or: The posthumous adventures of Pierrot“, followed by DEREVO celebrating LA DIVINA COMMEDIA in the round of the chapiteau. The cream of Dresdens music scene topped up by the British „Mistys Big Adventures“ will finish the festival days with their VERTICAL music nights.

For all film freaks St. Petersburg filmmaker Andrey Nastunichev has curated a programme giving an overview of the contemporary experimental film scene in St. Petersburg, enriched by masters and classics of Russian animation. OPEN CINEMA runs from Thursday, 5. May to Sunday, 8. May like a festival prologue from 6 to 7.30 pm in the western wing of Festspielhaus Hellerau.

The fact that all this is happening with the renovation of the main building in Hellerau in full swing gives more than an idea of the possibilities this place can create for the cultural avantgarde in the future.

In this sense:
Welcome to VERTICAL 2005 !!!

Chester Mueller
Management of
DEREVO and VERTICAL 2005