Libretto of the modern ballet The Red Room was inspired by the Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as “Death and The Maiden”. This famous motive, which has had several stage and screen adaptations, is developed further: Death, who longs for love arrives among the people, falls in love with the Prophet, cuts his off from everything earthly and takes him to the Underworld – the Red Room. In her attempt to bring the Prophet back to reality, the Maiden begins her initiation journey;she succeeds in separating him from the Underworld and takes him back to the Earth. Death remains alone in the emptiness of her Underworld. In addition to this triad, other dancers appear on the stage as well representing human feelings and conditions and contrasting the earthly versus the under-worldly.

The Red Room is a stage experiment about the need for belonging and eternal love ,but also the story about the solitude as the only form of complete belonging, through body language in crisis.

The Red Room uses the body as an instrument in the expression of many different emotional states, which we can recognise in this piece by Schubert - eternal search for the unique, unattainable, perfect state; something that we look within ourselves, but recognize in others. This is my story about the longing for love and fear of the unknown.

Igor Kirov