Only Connect is a London-based theatre company of actors made up of former prisoners and young people at risk of crime. His Teeth is their new production based on the story of fugitive Ralph Ojotu.
The lengthy and vastly expensive restoration of Moscow’s famous Bolshoi Theatre comes to fruition on 28 October, when there will be an invitation-only gala performance in the presence of President Medvedev. Costs have soared, end dates have been extended and accusations of inefficiency (and corrup
Hidden from view for decades, two large caches of Soviet wartime posters have recently emerged from the archives of the Chicago Art Institute and British Communist Party. Clementine Cecil reviews the striking, beautiful and often belligerent collections.
When Sergei Sobyanin was appointed Mayor of Moscow in October last year, many residents had come to loathe his predecessor Yuri Luzhkov’s ability to trade historic architecture for nepotistic building contracts. Sobyanin’s early talk on architectural preservation was tough, reports Clementine Ceci
The Narkomfin building in central Moscow is an experimental masterpiece and testament to the spirit of a young Soviet state. Yet it has been transformed from fashionable youth into ragged beggar. Clementine Cecil writes on the latest attempts to save it from ruin.
When Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was dethroned in late September, heritage campaigners breathed a collective sigh of relief. Luzhkov’s crude architectural vision was, after all, one of the official reasons for his dismissal. Yet just a few weeks later, campaigners have a new fight on their hands.
A city with a grand architectural heritage, Samara is today under threat, pincered by the greed of corrupt developers and impotence of government agencies. Clementine Cecil, co-founder of the MAPS architecture preservation society, writes on the spirited campaign to save Samara’s buildings.
Moscow’s superb legacy of Constructivist architecture has suffered since Neo-Classicism became the official style in the 1930s. But thanks to President Medvedev's intervention, the house of Konstantin Melnikov, one of Russia’s most important architectural masterpieces, looks set to become a State
On 5th May the Moscow authorities approved a new General Plan described by its critics as “the death-knell” for the city. It is yet another strong-handed move by Yuri Luzhkov, whose personal tastes and business interests have left a strong mark on the city since he became Mayor in 1992. A trend fo
Russia has lost a great dissident campaigner for Moscow’s built heritage with the death of David Sarkisyan, museum director, film impresario, scientist and aesthete
