St Petersburg Ballet Company prima ballerina Irina Kolesnikova is reaching out to the wider dance community and young female audiences by inviting Instagrammers to record her dress rehearsal before she opens this week at the London Coliseum in her new ballet Her Name Was Carmen.
Social media fans are being granted access as the star hosts the world’s first Instagram photo call live in the auditorium. The open photo call—a ballet and London Coliseum first—will take place at 19:00 on Monday 22 August in the front row of the stalls.
Irina explained, “this is a very contemporary production, exploring a present-day issue—the global refugee crisis—so we want to communicate with a contemporary audience, and Instagram is the natural language in which to do that.
"Ballet is the only 'high art' to have found a niche among the predominantly young Instagram audience—naturally as it's such a visually stunning medium.
“The arts can still seem inaccessible to young people, but allowing some brilliant up-and-coming photographers to share an inside look at Her Name Was Carmen on Instagram will hopefully help bring us closer to existing fans and introduce ballet to brand new audiences.
"It’s even more important for us because this production has been devised to draw attention to the current refugee crisis and Instagram has been arguably the primary medium for raising awareness around it.”