Staging the Nutcracker

Staging the Nutcracker is an extraordinary record of artist Mihail Chemiakin's commission from the legendary Kirov Ballet for a new version of The Nutcracker ballet. In this entirely new work, based on an internationally recognized and fiercely defended classic Chemiakin's innovative costume sketches and stage sets reveal a pwerful imagination at work -- one that breathes new life into this world-famous ballet. With a nod to his childhood love for the work of the German writer E.T.A. Hoffman, on whose fairy tale the original Nutcracker ballet was based, Chemiakin has brought a bolder vision to his version of this popular ballet.

Mihail Chemiakin was born in Moscow in 1943, grew up in occupied East Germany, and returned to Russia in 1957 where he was admitted to the Special High School of the Repin Academy of Art in Leningrad. In 1967, Chemiakin founded the St. Petersburg Group and developed the philosophy of Metaphysical Synthesism, dedicated to the creation of a new form of icon painting based on the study of religious art of all ages and peoples.

In 1971 Chemiakin was forced out of the USSR by the Soviet authorities. He settled first in France, then moved to New York City in 1981, and now lives in upstate New York.

Since 1989 Chemiakin has been able to return to post-Communist Russia. He has had numerous exhibitions there, staged a compeletely new version of The Nutcracker for the Kirov Ballet and created monuments for St. Petersburg and Moscow. Other sculptures stand in New York and London.

The research begun in the 1960s into the art of all ages and peoples has developed into a collection of millions of images organized into technical, historical and philosophical categories which has earned the artist five Honorary Doctorates and is the basis for his Institute of the Philosophy and Psychology of Art.

Chemiakin's work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the Sao Paolo Museum of Art (Brazil), the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, as well as smaller museums throughout Russia and the United States.