Next week, the National Ballet of Canada will present in New York City at the LincolnCenter (David Koch Theater) Christopher Wheeldon’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I’ll be happy to dance in role of Mother/The Queen of Hearts on September 10th & 12th.

One more Congratulation to my 10 years old son Maxim  with his new achievement!!!

Short film Happy Birthday, created by him and his tutor Nikita, was official selected by jury of

International Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF).

Letter from Sharon Switzer
Director, Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF)

Dear Maxim,

I am very pleased to inform you that your submission Happy Birthday was selected for inclusion in the 8th annual Toronto Urban Film Festival, running in the Toronto subway system from September 5-15, 2014. Your film will play on Saturday September 6th with 8 other films as part of the “Wish You Were Here” programme.
Submissions this year were very strong, and 80 films were selected, out of a total of 388 submissions from 33 countries. All selections were made by our 2014 Jury, which reviewed and discussed all submissions before coming up with the list of official selections.
TUFF is seen by an audience of over 1.2 million daily commuters on 63 subway platforms of Toronto’s transit system. Your film will cycle throughout one day of the festival, along with the other films in your program.

The TUFF opening Press Conference on Wednesday Sept 3rd at 10:30am, on the Southbound Platform of Dundas Station (Dundas Square entrance).

Finally, we invite you to attend the TUFF Closing Party & Awards Ceremony on Sunday September 14th, 7-10 pm at The Drake Hotel in Toronto. A great party with amazing food and drink; all official selections are screened, and prizes are presented to our various award winners.

Best,
Sharon Switzer
Director, Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF)

Toronto Urban Film Festival
The Film Festival for Commuters
September 5-15, 2014
Closing Party / Awards Ceremony – Drake Hotel – Sept. 14,  7-10pm
www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com<http://www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com/

Dance on Film: Choreographic Associate Robert Binet created a short film, Leda and the Swan, for The Royal Opera House’s Deloitte Ignite Festival. The film, shot by Second Soloist Dylan Tedaldi and featuring Principal Dancer Svetlana Lunkina, Corps de Ballet members Jack Bertinshaw, Emma Hawes and Félix Paquet, will be live streamed on The Royal Opera House’s YouTube page on Saturday, September 6 at 1:50 pm EST. Don’t miss it!

Link to The Royal Opera House’s YouTube page:  http://bit.ly/1rCFGWb

Congratulations to Anna Gaskell for successful demonstration of our project “& Juliet” at the festival “Art Basel”:
At Art Basel, Film Artists Get a Spotlight of Their Own

I am happy to inform that I have signed a next season contract with The National Ballet of Canada!  It is a  wonderful company, with gorgeous professional ballet troupe, smart and friendly management, very interesting repertoire and great opportunities for future creative development.

To my dear friends in Russia  

I believe that you’ll see me dancing on the stage of the Bolshoi many more times!  I hope that by the time I’m back, Russian Federation will already has held the event during which 300 ballet dancers will have been awarded simultaneously for their hard work and attempts to support the positive image of Russia.

I also hope that by that time, the ballet administration of the Bolshoi would contact its valid prima ballerina personally at least once in 2 years and show some interest in why she has not come to the theater  for such a long time.  It is impossible to imagine a situation when an artistic director, or at least anyone from the ballet management stuff of any ballet theater of the world not a single time has contacted a prima ballerina who’s been absent for 2 years and never even bothered to ask her a simple question like “How you’ve been?”, “What’s happening to you?” or “Would you come back?”

The New York Times:

“The girl is, of course, death itself, and the Bolshoi ballerina Svetlana Lunkina brought a welcome ferocity and eroticism to the role, her feet needle-sharp, her body taut and electric, as she and Mr. Vasiliev sparred and tussled. In their fraught encounter and in Mr. Vasiliev’s dreamlike walk to his inevitable death, the dancers brought a dramatic suspense, a hovering menace and an indefinable evocation of a particular era that made the ballet feel newly relevant.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/arts/dance/21iht-kings-of-the-dance.html?_r=2

The Independent:

“He’s rocket-powered in the explosive jumps and acrobatic twists, but shows a sense of desperate need as he reaches out to Svetlana Lunkina’s Death. She’s a steely presence, with an avid little face under her black bobbed wig, greedy for her victim.”
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/kings-of-the-dance-review-an-uneven-night-danced-with-conviction-9205234.html

The Guardian:

“There’s a disappointing lack of sexual chemistry between him and his nemesis (Svetlana Lunkina, the sole woman of the evening). But Lunkina’s witchy stare, the flickering staccato of her dancing, perfectly capture the eerie influences of ETA Hoffmann and the grotesque in Petit’s drama of death.”
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/mar/20/kings-of-the-dance-london-coliseum-review

Bachtrack:

“Svetlana Lunkina offered a predatory and slinky Girl but lacked the sex appeal needed to add extra frisson to the drama.”
Read more: http://uk.bachtrack.com/review-kings-of-the-dance-london-coliseum-march-2014

A Younger Theatre website:

“Lunkina appears, in creepy yellow dress and black gloves, tormenting the young man – she is by turns tender and violent. The dance is a battle of wills between Vasiliev and Lunkina, the movement is aggressive and chilling.”
Read more: http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-kings-of-the-dance-coliseum/#sthash.DiZ4GSWE.dpufhttp://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-kings-of-the-dance-coliseum/

Critical Dance:

“Like Tamara Rojo before her, Lunkina plays her role rather kittenishly. She is a cruel child rather than the icy femme fatale that Zizi Jeanmaire created. This production loses much of the starkness that the 1966 Nureyev/Jeanmaire film provided. Jeanmaire wore a cropped, red tunic and added a suggestive plié in second on her entrance that seems to have been discarded. At some point, the girl was given a yellow dress which is more reminiscent of Flemming Flindt’s “The Lesson” and adds an odd air of innocence to the work.”
Read more: http://www.criticaldance.org/2014/03/20/kings-of-the-dance/

The Stage:

“Svetlana Lunkina, the cruel, faithless lover of Jean Cocteau’s imagining is lithe and ominous as she leads the young man to his grim fate.”
Read more: http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/39691/kings-of-the-dance

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I want to make a statement.

My family is still being followed by a corrupt group of people, who have the strong connections  with the highest echelons of Russian power. These people have a serious influence on Russian courts of justice, they fabricate documents, forge signature, hack personal e-mails and web-sites, constantly intervene in other people’s personal lives in order to serve their filthy selfish ends.

I know that these people are sure they will never suffer consequences for their actions. And I am perfectly aware of how incredibly difficult it is for a common person to go against the whole corrupt system and, finally, defeat it. But, I’m going to try.

I hope that the new state system of Ukraine will base its principles not on the totalitarian corruption, but on respect to common people. And it will be just wonderful, if one day the renewed Ukraine will serve as a good example for       Russia.

 Svetlana Lunkina.

Congratulations to my 10-year-old son Maxim Moskalev and his tutor Nikita Ovsyannikov on their great win at Indie Fest International Film Festival in California for short film “Dead State”.