don’t dance, don’t talk (2025)

In this work, Natalia reimagines the fairy tale as a moral landscape, a space where myth becomes a mirror for truth. Her story tells of a mountain that swallows the owner of a gold mine, a figure whose greed poisons both the earth and its people. Within this allegory, the artist examines the anatomy of fear: how it seeps into human behaviour, how violence becomes ordinary when left unchecked.

Like all fables, Natalia’s tale carries its quiet warning. It is a reflection on power, responsibility, and the fragile balance between progress and destruction. As the saying goes, “A fairy tale is a lie, there’s a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows.”

Through the language of story, Natalia invites us to look beyond, to see in the mountain’s hunger not punishment, but the earth’s own act of sovereignty.

Credits: Cameraman Oleg Revenko, Sound Kurilov Mikhail, Costume designer Anouk van Wijk, Frame designer Sydnie Nislow, Dramaturg Paschal Daantos Berry