Behind the scenes of Flock, a contemporary ballet piece about the cancer experience, choreographed by acute myeloid leukemia Masha Cherezova. The piece will include Onco-Ballet dancers and fellow cancer patients and survivors.
Interested in being one of the Onco-Ballet dancers in the Flock piece premiering at the SoCal Ballet Scene festival on September 14th?
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Flock synopsis:
We have the unique opportunity to showcase a new piece from choreographer, professional dancer, and young acute myeloid leukemia cancer survivor Masha Cherezova. This piece will be the first of its kind choreographed around the topic of what it means to go through a cancer diagnosis performed exclusively by cancer patients and survivors.
A common metaphor given to patients who are diagnosed with cancer is that they are undergoing a war, their body is the battleground and cancer is the enemy that must be defeated. However, this metaphor is quite negative and implies that there is a winner and a loser, and can wrongly suggest failure, however cancer is much more complex. I am interested in cancer as a part of the natural world, its mystifications, scale, beauty, and cruelty. I hope to use many bodies in the work to explore the movement patterns of biological cells and their coming together as tissue, organs, organisms, etc. . I am also thinking about using two soloists who might represent the stages of cancer and the more human emotions attached to the cancer journey.
This piece will give the opportunity to other non-professional dancers who are part of the Onco-Ballet Foundation community to take the stage alongside Masha and Anna to showcase ballet in its healing form.
About Masha Cherezova:
Masha is a dancer and choreographer born in Columbus, Ohio and raised in Southern California, she trained with Victor and Tatiana Kasatsky at the V&T Ballet Academy in Laguna Hills. In 2019, she left the United States to pursue her professional career as a ballet dancer in Russia. From 2019 to 2022, Masha performed the extent of the corps de ballet repertoire of the Novosibirsk Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet as well as the Astrakhan Theatre of Opera and Ballet. In August of 2022, Masha was unexpectedly diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) which forced her to leave her dancing position in Russia and return home to California to endure chemotherapy treatments. Currently, Masha is a student at the University of Southern California studying Business Administration and independently choreographing.
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