Visagino Kultūros Centras

Visaginas in the project Dance Plus City, 2022

Local context
Visaginas is the youngest city in Lithuania. It was founded in 1975 as a town for workers of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP). The satellite city of the INPP was established in a forested area near a lake, far away from larger towns, to meet the geographical requirements for nuclear objects. However, the INPP ceased operations in December 2009 over safety concerns and is currently being decommissioned.

However, Visaginas remains the exclusive city in Lithuania that offers:
- unique atomic atmosphere;
- harmony of the urban landscape and nature;
- well-developed infrastructure;
- walkability (almost everything is reachable on foot);
- 2 hours by train to capital of Lithuania - Vilnius.
From the very beginning of city life, attention of local authorities was brought to non-formal education. As a consequence of that, Visaginas raised quite a number of well-known talents: opera singers, ballet dancers, actors or visual art artists.

One of the most famous institutions of non-formal education is Visaginas Acrobatic Sport School established in 1978 and used to be one of the strongest acrobatic sport centers within former USSR republics. Most of local people of several generations had attended it. Nowadays almost 250 students 6–18-year-old attend classes of acrobatics and it has a great potential for development of contemporary circus in Visaginas.
Residency of Performing Arts
Visaginas Cultural Centre residency is a platform for artists working in different fields of performing arts: contemporary circus, dance, music, theatre, site-specific performances etc.

The residency aims to encourage development of various performing arts projects, as well as activities with local community in the form of creative workshops, work in progress presentations, discussions etc.

What we offer?
- 3 different venues for the creative processes: hall Banga - 685 sq m; choreography hall - 130 sq m; hall Sedulina - 250 sq m, - one of which has basic equipment required for contemporary circus practices (rigging points; Chinese pole; dancing mat (black / white); safety mats for arial acrobatics, juggling tools, unicycles);
- Opportunity to be invited to one of the two international festivals produced by Visaginas Cultural Centre – the contemporary circus festival ‘New Circus Stop in Visaginas’ or performing arts festival ‘Visaginas Spaces Festival’.
- Artistic fee, the amount of which depends on the residency program.