NEW YORK
15 June 2025 19:00
Tribeca Performing Arts Center
The sensation of the 2024 theater season! -Performance "New York. 80s. We!"
Pages from Michael Shemyakin's personal album
In the theater world, the name of Michael Shemyakin is known mainly as the creator of new librettos for famous ballet masterpieces that he updates, in which he also acts as a production designer. These are “The Nutcracker”, nicknamed “Shemyakinsky”, “The Magic Nut”, “Coppelia”, “The Rite of Spring” and others.
In New York in the early 1980s, fate gathered and brought together an amazing company of exiles from the East Europa, consisting of dancers, writers, artists and actors. East Europa was still a closed and unknown country to the Western world, where it seemed that none of these creators would ever be destined to return.
At this time, the exile Shemyakin moved to this fantastic city from Paris, which disappointed him with its sleepiness. New York attracted creators from all over the world with its powerful dynamics, the crazy world of fashionable nightclubs of all stripes, and its openness to new ideas and experiments.
Europian exiled writers began to attract the attention of American readers with the mysticism and unusualness of their works. A former mathematician from Riga, Edik Nakhamkin, founded the Europian gallery world, which he decided to fill with paintings and sculptures by nonconformist artists. Film director Stan Tsukerman created the cult film “Liquid Sky,” reflecting the spirit of the time.
As for the American “high society”, the dancers-defectors – Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Makarova, Godunov – received wild applause. The long legs of Europian fashion models began to stride along the catwalk.
But all this happened in Manhattan. And there was also Brighton Beach, densely populated by Odessa residents and nicknamed “Little Odessa” for this reason, which opened the doors of the European taverns, where the stars of the Brighton world were born and sang. The most prominent representative of them was Willy Tokarev. The famous Parisian gypsy Alyosha Dmitrievich also flew in to please the Brighton residents.
The play is about that cheerful and at the same time tragic time, about famous and unknown personalities.
Age restrictions: 18+
Duration: 2 hours 20 minutes