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In June 2022, Mikhail Piotrovskiy, director of the Hermitage Museum, controversially referred to Russian art exhibitions abroad as a "special cultural operation." At the same time, Russian classical ballet continues to be one of the country's most prominent cultural exports—a global symbol of Russian artistic achievement and refinement. Although classical ballet originated in France and evolved into a shared cultural treasure of the world, it has, over time, become deeply intertwined with Russia’s artistic identity.

Today, as russian forces wreak havoc on Ukrainian cities and civilians, the country's global image is undergoing a profound transformation, shifting from one of beauty and refinement to inhumanity and destruction. This raises difficult questions: Can classical ballet still serve as a symbol of elegance and culture when the country it represents is associated with brutality and violence? Can it continue to act as a glossy veneer, concealing the lawlessness, anti-humanism, and imperial ambitions of the russian elite?

The Beauty of the Beast offers a dystopian reimagining of classical ballet in a society where the arts are co-opted to serve the military-industrial complex, subordinated to state ideology, and propaganda. It envisions a traditional ballet class as a regimented training ground for producing the "perfect soldier," where classical technique is repurposed as an aestheticized form of violence—an assault on the human body and spirit.

Based on Anton Ovchinnikov's poem New Russian Ballet, written at the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, the performance interrogates how war can irrevocably alter the perception of ballet—a refined art form once deeply rooted in European culture, now implicated in a nation’s authoritarian narrative.