GIFT theatre festival to host Sasha Waltz troupe, Sankai Juku company in Tbilisi

Celebrated contemporary theatre troupes including Sasha Waltz and Guests and Sankai Juku will mark the autumn season of Tbilisi's cultural life starting next weekend with an anniversary edition of the Georgian International Festival of Arts in Tbilisi (GIFT).

Marking 20 years since the festival's founding, organisers have drawn up a program of a dozen theatre shows by local and foreign companies in addition to craft shows, presentations and meetings.

The roster will be headlined by companies including Sasha Waltz and Guests, a Berlin-based troupe led by choreographer Sasha Waltz in 1993.

Their dancers will present Continu, praised for its combination of "well-crafted modern dance with a German Tanztheater sensibility" by The New York Times.

 In Continu a field of tension between choreographic, musical and visual currents of energy is generated, while the title denotes the continuity of the perpetual forces of Nature", said a summary of the project by the company.

Japanese experimental troupe Sankai Juku will go on festival stage for their production The Kumquat Seed, first staged in 1978.

 Its material is drawn from [...] slow-motion dances that can register zen states of calm or attenuated anguish; twisted, clawed poses that can suggest both animal or divine forms", said a review of the show at London's Sadler's Wells theatre by The Guardian.

The show involves dancers reminiscent of ancient statues performing on score involving electronic music elements and experimental effects.

Japan's Sankai Juku troupe is in the festival program with their production 'The Kumquat Seed'. Photo: GIFT.

Organisers will also invite the audience to see a new stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's timeless novel Anna Karenina, presented by the Baltic House Theatre.

 One of the iconic characters of the world literature gets a new interpretation in the production of the famous Russian actor and director Alexander Galibin."

  Anna Karenina is faced with the fact that she does not know her own self and her desires [...] This is not a love story. Not the story of treason. This is a tragedy: ancient Greek, universal", said the St Petersburg-based theatre in their summary of the production.

The Georgian participation in the festival will see the Mikheil Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre present their staging of King Lear, the celebrated Shakespeare tragedy, as directed by Zurab Getsadze.

Aimed to mark 400 years since the death of its author, the production first premiered in 2016.

The Baltic House Theatre will present 'Anna. The Tragedy', their 2016 stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic. Photo: GIFT.

The anniversary of the GIFT festival itself will be celebrated with a photo exhibition of works by Lasha Kuprashvili on the opening evening of the event.

Paying homage the legacy of Georgian theatre director Mikheil Tumanishvili, the festival was founded by artistic director Keti Dolidze in the turbulent Georgia of the 1990s .

A member of the International Festival and Events Association (IFEA), GIFT has hosted over 300 "international visiting groups" since its founding.

This year's edition of the festival will run through November 12.