A revolution in culture took place in the fervid atmosphere of the decade preceding the Russian revolution of 1917. Russian artists, writers, and theater directors were among those experimenting with new forms, and the field of visual art broadened to include practices which might today be termed "performance." By the end of the 1920s, artists were experiencing restrictions and with the official adoption of the doctrine of Socialist Realism, in 1934, virtually all process-based and improvisatory artisticpractices were abandoned in favor of highly-choreographed forms such as ballet and parades. The death of Stalin in 1953, and the subsequent Khrushchev "thaw," encouraged the postwar generation of artists to begin experimenting again and, over the next sixty years, performance would develop from a marginal practice to a powerful means of expressionwithin the social space. Beyond Control: Russian Performance from Futurism to the Present 1910-2016 looks at performance in Russia from the avant-garde to today. New essays and historical texts examine the wide diversity of performativepractices.
A chronology of key events positions Russian performance within the wider social and political context in a country which experienced radical change across the century.