Dancing the New Realities: The Beauty and a Beast of the War

This essay is a record of the experience of the ongoing war in Ukraine, presented from the perspective of the contemporary dance artist Anton Ovchinnikov. Captured almost in statu nascendi, his moral dilemmas and difficult choices—personal and artistic—constitute a kind of a war diary, a record of a moment in history. The author also asks important questions about artistic responsibility, whose relevance resounds ever more strongly in the face of the continuing conflict. Joanna Szymajda’s introduction offers a historical panorama of artistic phenomena and attitudes in response to the state of war. The author focuses on 20th- and 21st-century artists, showing the variety of formats and aesthetics in the works of such major figures as Martha Graham, José Limón, John Cranko, and Rami Be’er, among others.