Natalia Agulnik archive

Natalia Agulnik archive

Dedicated to choreographer and contemporary dance teacher Natalia Agulnik, the Natalia Agulnik archive comprises digital documentation of her practice from the 1980s to the 2010s, including video recordings of performances, flyers, posters, booklets, brochures, invitation cards, photographs, and other artefacts. The collection also includes ephemera from events in which the Inklyuzy dance theater took part.

The Artist

Natalia Agulnik (b. 1954, Kemerovo) is a choreographer and contemporary dance teacher. She began her professional career in Petropavlovsk‑Kamchatsky, where in 1978 she founded the dance ensemble Kontrasty (Contrasts). She completed an internship at the Prague Dance Theater at Charles University (1988) and studied at London Contemporary Dance School (1991). She was co‑organizer of some of the first contemporary dance festivals held in the Soviet Union (Vladivostok, 1989; Novosibirsk, 1990).

In 1992 she founded the dance theater Inklyuzy (Kaliningrad), which gave its debut performance in 1994. The company’s repertoire included both miniatures and large‑scale works. Performances include: Born, Married, Died (2000), Little Tragedies (based on plays by Alexander Pushkin, 2001), Kantselyarium (2003), Deportation (based on the recollections of settlers who moved to the Kaliningrad Region in the 1950s, 2005), Requiem for Hats and Glasses (based on works by writers of the Silver Age, 2007), Potsdamer Platz (based on the play by Arvydas Juozaitis, 2008), The Arrest of Mr. K. (inspired by works by Franz Kafka, 2009), The City (2011), Cotton (2012), Mind Games (2013), Guernica (2015), and Agoraphobia (2018). Agulnik’s productions have been staged at international contemporary dance festivals in Belarus, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic).

In 2001, Agulnik organized the DanceTransit international dance festival in Kaliningrad. Alongside performances by Russian and international choreographers, the festival program featured masterclasses, photo exhibitions, lectures, seminars on dance criticism, creative sessions, and evening screenings of dance films. In 2002, Agulnik was among the founders of the TsEKh Russian association of contemporary dance theaters. She lives and works in Kaliningrad.