"The courage to express opinions, the will to take risks, contempt for the well-known recipes for success" are the ideals of the international contemporary art festival TERRITORIЯ, or "Territory", that has opened in the Ural city of Perm.

For the first time in its 4-year history the TERRITORIЯ is unfolding away from Moscow. The move to Perm is enthusiastically greeted by the artistic director of the festival, Kirill Serebrennikov; participants from the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan share his enthusiasm.

Perm is not just an Ural city, it is one of Russia's cultural capitals, says Kirill Serebrennikov. A museum of modern art has opened in Perm; different theater projects are underway; 9 festivals are held in the city every year. People involved with contemporary art all over the world know about Perm. There are many financial difficulties this year, and local authorities admit this, saying, however: "One way to solve the problem is to develop modern art". This leads to a different self-perception for the people of Perm, who get new cultural codes to interact with the grim reality, and this is important.

The TERRITORIЯ Festival was designed as "a territory of personal freedom", its organizers say. Among them are famous actors of the middle generation, Yevgeny Mironov and Chulpan Khamatova. They are popular and authoritative among youngsters, as they are always open to daring experiments. At the current festival Chulpan Khamatova, who is a dramatic actress, will take part in a ballet performance together with her partner from the Bolshoi Theater: she will have to dance... an opera. This is not the only surprise: the opera was written by Leonid Desatnikov, a contemporary avant-garde composer, who was inspired by an old sentimental love story Poor Lisa by Nikolai Karamzin. The tangled plot is presented as a movie fantasy adventure.

The TERRITORIЯ is full of experimental spirit, like a special festival event dedicated to German dramaturgy. This project is a reading of five German plays translated to Russian, and the reading sites are unexpected – a gas station, a children's playground, a museum's cellar. This year the experiments will also be carried out at the site of a penal colony. where a performance will be staged featuring volunteers among the prisoners. The idea is part of the Theater in Prison project which will be implemented by British director Alex Dauer, who has previously staged the production with the convicts of 50 British prisons. For all that, the events of the festival are strictly in accordance with the program motto of the organizers: "Freedom and Responsibility Are Inseparable". Provocation at the festival is restricted to aesthetics.