Oleg Stepanov

OLEG STEPANOV dance artist, choreographer, film and music maker

Oleg was born in Russia, he graduated from the department of physics at Ural State University. At the same time, he studied contemporary and jazz dance at the Contemporary Art Center in Yekaterinburg, Urals. He started his professional dance career at the age of 23.

Oleg danced and created pieces in the leading companies of contemporary dance in Russia. For 3 years he danced in Gothenburg dance company, Sweden. And since 2016, he has been a dancer in Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Oleg actively creates independently and in collaboration with other artists. He has collaborated in original creations with such choreographers/directors as Dimitris Papaioannou, Saburo Teshigawara, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alan Lucien Oyen, Adolphe Binder, Richard Siegal, Constanza Macras, Uri Ivgi & Johan Greben, Arika Yamada, Jim de Block, Marc Wagenbach.

Tanztheater Wuppertal commissioned Oleg’s work «I can’t be present due to traveling» as a part of «Underground VII» festival in 2019.

He was a long time collaborator of choreographer Tatiana Baganova, in particular he assisted her in creation of «Rite of spring» on music of Igor Stravinsky in Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Russia in 2013 and in «Sepia», a piece commissioned by American Dance Festival, Durham, USA in 2010.

Oleg actively teaches workshops and facilitates his research laboratories (on a regular basis at b12 festival in Berlin, and Italy).

His choreographic language and method is based on the observation of the body in space and space in the body. In particular, Oleg sees the movement as a synthesis between the architecture and biomechanics of the body and a sensitive and sensorial inner journey. In his creative work, it’s important for Oleg to assume and envision that the body is endowed with qualities of the subject and the object simultaneously, and that it exists in spacetime among pure potentialities and multitude of choices.