"X-Tradition"

The physical theatre "InZhest" (till 2002 - "Zhest"- "the Gesture" in Russian) was founded in 1980 by the students of the Minsk Institute of Culture - Slava Inozemtcev, Galina Yeryomina, Tatiana Tsurko, Sergei Masyko, Sergei Shvec with the participation of a Bulgarian student Ivan Minchev and others. Since that time more than 15 performances were presented to the audience. Every new performance turned out to be a new stage (as if at school) in mastering the art of the corpeal theatre. Having made a start from the classical mime we came to a carnival, buffo theatre. As to "Adventures of a Brave Soldier Shveik", unfortunately, it was staged only two times and then banned by the authorities of the Institute of Culture as a great number of "political mistakes had been found out. Later on, there was a careful investigation of the clownery in such performances as "Drops" (1986) and "It's not Funny" (1987), afterwards - a serious studying of the body improvisation and fighting arts of the East in the play "A Game without Rules" (1988). Meanwhile, we made improvisations and presented such performances like "happenings" just in the streets, parks and indoors. After that there was a phantasmagoria in the manner of "a social art" - "Still Waters Run Deep" (1990), then - the tragicomedies "A Traditional Kitchen of Rewkew Island"(1993) and "A Secret Rendezvous" (1995), combining theatrical and movement traditions of the East and the West.

As from 1995 the actors of the "Zhest" theatre have been working out an original system of training which was called "Dances of Animals".

Theatre "ZHEST" was on tour, took part in international theatrical festivals and joint projects in Belarus, Kiev , S.-Petersburg , Moscow , Riga, Odessa as well as in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Poland, organized in Minsk the festivals of mime "Blazan"(1987,1989), the festivals of physical theatres "X-Tradition"(2001,2002) and Butoh dance projectes with theatre "Tatoeba"(Germany-Japan) in 1999 and "SU-EN Butoh company"(Sweden) in 2001.