Vasya Run – "Stay here – you are the main act" (2021)

Vasya Run is an anonymous, experimental platform enabling interaction and collaboration. Merging theatre, hip hop, contemporary art and Russian spiritual practices such as the ‘Fourth Way’ – an esoteric method for awakening one's consciousness created by Russian philosopher George Gurdjieff – the work forges connections to a range of issues and concerns from gender politics to youth subcultures and their mediation via social media.

The performance premiered at Mudam combines text, gestures, sound and costume to create a complex and symbolically charged work exploring male-dominated street subcultures and the anxieties of young people. Created over an extended rehearsal period, four young men from Moscow with no background in the performing arts undergo an intensive programme designed to address their experiences of anxiety whilst exploring the boundaries of self-awareness and introspection.

Vasya is adopted as a typical name for a young adult born in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today it stands to represent a generation of young adults struggling with 21st-century realities of work and consumer culture and their accompanying social pressures. Investigating street subcultures, radical youth and teenage experience is at the core of all their work.

The costumes have been conceived by Luxembourg-based designer Jeremy Palluce.

Vasya Run (founded 2014, Moscow) is an anonymous platform investigating street subcultures and radical youth. Vasya Run has presented performances at venues and festivals including Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2020); Kampnagel Theater, Hamburg; MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London; V-A-C Foundation, Moscow (2018); Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (2017). Vasya run has participated in the V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2016) and Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2015).