See State Ballet of Georgia dancers in designer garments (VIDEO)

The State Ballet of Georgia is currently launching its New Year’s Eve program in Tbilisi — in the meanwhile you can see dancers of the country’s principal troupe in a behind-the-scenes video of a photoshoot for their 2018 calendar.

Photographed by Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Creative Director and photographer Grigor Devejiev, the project involved over 20 dancers and their artistic director Nina Ananiashvili.

The performers wore make-up by Christina Regini and were styled by Giorgi Wazowski, with Oleksandr Demianenko producing the video edit of the process.

The Tbilisi-based company has produced print calendars over the recent years, however this holiday season marked their first project featuring designer clothes.

This is a different project because we are not being photographed as female or male dancers — it is our personalities, cast in characters, that are photographed here”, Ananiashvili told Rustavi 2 TV.

The novelty of the project was also underlined by leading soloist Nino Samadashvili, who also spoke to reporters about the project.

We found out our stage profession is completely different from working for the camera, which is what we had to do here — all the aspects, especially mime, are involved in this. But I think we did a good work in the end”, Samadashvili said.

Leading the work with the participating dancers, Devejiev also spoke about the peculiarities of communication for the end result:

The work process with dancers is very difficult because their language is the stage — they talk to us through stage. This means [as a photographer] it is difficult to find common language with them, however if you manage to do this, everything goes well”, the photographer said in his comments.

The two-day session for the calendar was held following the company’s return to Georgia from their tour of Italy on December 22.

Appearing at Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, they performed Swan Lake for the Italian audience over a week concluding on December 20.

Now back in Tbilisi, the troupe is preparing to invite dance enthusiasts to their New Year’s Eve program of performances.

This will include seven shows of the Christmas-season classic The Nutcracker, set to be performed from December 28-January 10.