I met dancer Oksana Griaznova in the capital, at a café near Lukiškės Square. People buzz along Gediminas Avenue – the autumn pace is clearly here. But our conversation doesn’t begin with tempo or the stage; instead, we start with certain spots in Kaunas that Oksana remembers nostalgically. “That place for me is Ąžuolynas,” Oksana says. “I lived nearby, so it wasn’t just a beautiful park: it reminds me of conversations and time spent with my colleague Mantas Stabačinskas, who was my neighbor. Sometimes, while there, I felt as if I was in Mantas’s kitchen.”
This year, having presented a sketch of her work Under the Sun at the international performing arts festival ConTempo, Oksana also names city spaces that have since changed. “I really miss the old Santaka, where a bridge is now being built in the distance, and Nemunas Island – the way it was up until around 2016. Back then, the paths on Nemunas Island were just gravel and dirt, not concrete. It was a real patch of nature right in the city center.”
We meet just after the end of the seventh ConTempo festival. I’m curious about your relationship with this festival.
Since there aren’t that many performing arts festivals in Lithuania, I try to go everywhere I can. There have been some years that I managed to see the entire ConTempo program! I have a rule: I never read the descriptions, so I can avoid having expectations. After all, sometimes the piece you’d skip based on the description turns out to be the very best one.
In general, ConTempo is a celebration for Kaunas. Since the festival takes place all over the city, in open spaces, you can see how the number of spectators grows year after year. People simply stumble upon art – it happens to them by accident: they see something, they drop by unintentionally, and the next year they come deliberately. You see people who can’t fit into the performances waiting in lines for an hour. This shows that there is a need for art; it’s just that people can’t always afford to pay for it.
When I was watching Under the Sun, one of your colleagues came over to greet my father, who was sitting next to me. He asked why she had glitter on her eyes, and she replied that it was her way of supporting you. That made me reflect on the current performing arts community. It seems full of togetherness, but inevitably, there must also be competition, right?
That is a very difficult and ambiguous question. I think that in our community, there are people who sincerely support one another despite differences. As a professional, you can see whether your colleague’s work is of quality, even if it’s not to your taste. But at the same time, since we belong to the non-governmental sector, we inevitably compete with each other – for grants, for funding, for everything. In the end, I think it all depends on personal perspective. Do you see another’s victory as your own defeat, or simply as a success that contributes to the growth of the whole field?
You are from Pabradė, but you have lived abroad, in Klaipėda, in Kaunas, and now in Vilnius. What do you feel for Kaunas?
When I returned from abroad, it seemed that if I were to live in Lithuania, it could only be in Vilnius. However, it so happened that I received a job offer at the dance theater Aura. Although during the first year I had to commute constantly because I also had work in Vilnius, something unexpected happened: Kaunas became home. Later, I went to work in Klaipėda, suffered an injury, and went through a difficult period of recovery and restlessness. In the end, I decided to return specifically to Kaunas. In part, it was a practical decision – my surgery was scheduled here, and a close friend who lived here could help me afterward. But at the same time, I also felt a strong pull.
And lately, almost all of my work has simply shifted to Vilnius. I had to commute daily for several weeks or even months, and I realized that the time spent on the road – four hours a day – just drained all my energy. This year, I didn’t receive a single job offer in Kaunas, while in Vilnius, there were five or six, not only as a dancer, but also as a choreographer for drama productions.
Contemporary dance performances are often shown only a few times, because that’s how much money is spent on their dissemination. If your work, for example, with the Kaunas-based Nuepiko, became part of a repertoire, would you spend more time in Kaunas?
That’s the reality of funding in the entire Lithuanian non-governmental sector. Perhaps it’s also tied to consumer culture, where there isn’t much interest in showing what has already been created; it is better to constantly create something new. Sometimes you carry a project with you for many years; it has its own path; it is performed and receives recognition. But other works simply go nowhere.
Tell me about your latest work. In it, the strict limitation of a one-square-meter platform contrasts with your boundless, light movement, rocking into infinity. What does that square meter mean to you personally?
The topic of limitations and freedom has fascinated me for a long time. I wanted to create something within a one-square-meter space, and when I started experimenting, I realized you can do almost anything within that area. For example, walking in a one-meter space creates a paradox: you appear to be walking, but you’re not actually going anywhere. So, movement occurs, but at the same time, it doesn’t.
From this paradox, the entire piece grew, and psychological elements began to emerge about how we confine ourselves within frames and suffer because of it. Just like in life: you choose something, and then you suffer. But in this work, I consciously leave a lot of space for the audience’s thoughts; I don’t use gestures or signs that would narrow the field of interpretation.
It’s not so original to ask about the title, but…
I associate this piece and the name with The Little Prince, and how he travels from planet to planet – different worlds with their own rules, which the inhabitants simply follow, sometimes without even questioning why. The story of the lamplighter stuck with me the most. He has to light and extinguish the lamp every minute on his rapidly spinning planet because “that’s the duty,” even though in truth he just wants to rest.
And here everything intertwines with my personal experience. Now my body’s abilities are different, but I am simply grateful for what it can do. I know what it means to live for five years with constant, chronic pain, and I know what joy it is not to feel it. You realize that your body is a gift.
Did you have a plan B? What would happen if you could no longer dance?
Even before the injury, I often thought about what would come next. For me, dance was always a way of learning, not necessarily about dance itself, but about the world. It was a tool through which I could feel, understand, and reflect. I had told myself that if dance stopped being a source of learning, I would probably step back and take up something else, maybe philosophy. But that always remained a “maybe” for the future.
After the injury, everything changed. Six months after the first surgery, the doctors started saying, “Maybe you should consider something else.” For the first six months, I rejected that idea completely. But time passed, nothing improved, and I had to come to terms with it.
After ten months on sick leave, I had to return to the Šeiko Dance Theatre still in total uncertainty. I just kept going and trying. It was at that time that Dalija Aćin Thelander, who creates installations for babies, came to the theatre. I came to the audition unable to run or squat. I was sure I wouldn’t be accepted, but I was still guided by the joy of movement and the fear of it – how would my leg endure a six-hour workday? They accepted me. That was a turning point. I realized that even in such a condition, I could still work.
So maybe the most important tool is the brain?
The body is intelligent, too. Even if it cannot do much, it communicates. Years of practice don’t just disappear. Perhaps because I didn’t expect to be accepted into the project, I was very relaxed and simply felt the joy of moving, even if not like before, much more carefully and consciously.
My character is quite driven, leaning toward perfectionism, and suddenly, there were limitations. You have to be careful, learn to doubt, and seek help. As much as it infuriated me at the time, during the first year after the injury, a few colleagues told me that I now move even better than when I was healthy. In the end, I realized that in a certain sense, I am grateful for this experience. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but I am grateful.
You’re an expressive personality, a stage person, but you’re barely on social media. These days, many people build their careers through TikTok.
Yes, but that’s not for me. Maybe it mattered a little during my teenage years, but that stage ended around the age of seventeen. I had to film for music videos and commercials, and even then, I understood very clearly that it wasn’t for me.
What was missing? Was it the contact with the audience?
Authenticity. In the literal sense. When filming, if someone makes a mistake, everything is redone. You realize how fake that process is. What interests me is in-person human communication: sitting, standing, being with one another. The screen always strips away part of that authenticity, puts on filters. I understand people who live and work that way. But I also understand that I am incapable of that. At this point in my life, I choose not to engage in work that goes against my nature.
