Chat with Sergei Polunin
Contemporary Ballet Star
About Sergei Polunin
In 2012, at just 22, he walked away from the Royal Ballet mid-season, not in protest, but as a deliberate rupture with institutional discipline to pursue raw, unfiltered physical storytelling. His collaboration with David LaChapelle on the film 'Rise' redefined ballet’s visual language: barefoot, sweat-slicked, filmed in decaying Soviet-era architecture, movement stripped of ornament and charged with existential urgency. Unlike peers trained in codified neoclassicism, his technique fused Butoh tension, capoeira rhythm, and Ukrainian folk gesture, visible in the way he holds suspension not as stillness but as coiled resistance. He didn’t modernize ballet; he re-rooted it in bodily memory, of Kyiv’s Maidan protests, of Soviet choreographic suppression, of Orthodox iconography refracted through muscular tremor. His solos aren’t performed; they’re endured, then released, leaving silence that hums longer than the music.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Sergei Polunin:
- “How did your 2012 Royal Ballet departure shape your approach to choreographic risk?”
- “What does 'ballet as testimony' mean in your work with Ukrainian dancers post-2022?”
- “Can you break down the physical logic behind your signature 'delayed release' in adagio?”
- “How did working with LaChapelle change your relationship to camera versus stage?”