Storydance about five (Dina Veryutina, Russia, 2021, 14:31)

Storydance about five

Director: Dina Veryutina
Choreographer: Olga Vasileva
Runtime: 14 minutes 11 seconds
Country of Origin: Russia
Format: Digital, Black & White
Language: Russian
Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Description
You cannot tell about dance in words, but words can tell about happiness, about fear, and find the elusive connection between memory, word, and movement. Five young dancers from Vasilevadanceco share their innermost thoughts, looking intently into the eyes of the viewer, and then immediately disappear into dance.

Director Biography — Dina Veryutina
Based in St. Petersburg, Russia, Dina Veryutina is a filmmaker who has been working in the genre of dance film since 2015. Her main interests lie in documentary cinematography, inclusive projects, and the interdisciplinary field of dance film, where she merges cinematic language with the expressive possibilities of movement and the body.

Programmer’s notes — Blas Payri

We have selected works by Dina Veryutina over several editions of EIVV and even dedicated a special session to her during an in-person meeting. She is particularly gifted in filming dance and integrating the camera as part of the choreographic language itself.

In Storydance about five, Dina achieves a delicate balance between documentary and videodance. The film alternates between the dancers’ spoken reflections —intimate monologues filmed in extreme close-up of their eyes— and scenes of these same dancers moving freely in meaningful locations.

Their dance appears spontaneous and authentic, with a natural energy that contrasts with the still intensity of their faces in the interviews. The camera follows their movement with sensitivity, sometimes allowing moments of blur or shifting focus that enhance the freshness and improvisational nature of the piece.

The use of low camera angles, rhythmic editing, and transitions between speech and motion creates a genuine choreographic structure in film. Veryutina captures both the individuality and the shared humanity of these young performers, transforming personal testimony into a poetic exploration of memory, identity, and embodiment.