Roller skating marathon
This Saturday August 25, St. Petersburg will become one giant roller rink. Kicking off at 3pm on the Palace Square, the much-loved annual roller skating marathon will bring together thousands of city dwellers joyously skating through the main streets of St. Petersburg.
Making a victorious return to their place of departure, the roller skaters will be rewarded with a music concert featuring a mishmash of jazz, rock, and pop tunes and starring St. Petersburg’s budding performers ART-Jazz Band, The Vicious Seeds, Soul-K, and Surfa. Admission is free and everyone is welcome to join in the fun. And just in case you’ve always wanted to put on a superhero leotard and slide around the city, this will be your moment to shine as crazy costumes are not only acceptable, but very much desirable, so go for it (and send us a pic).
Music
Boogie your way through the weekend at ‘The Rock-n-Roll Weekend’ in Gatchina park on August 25-26. The event will also be filled with lots of country music, blues, surf, and swing. Headliners include the best of the best of Russian rock-n-roll talent such as The Milestones, Las Vegas Combo, and Crackers. Dust off your comfiest dancing shoes, as live performances of iconic 50’s and 60’s twist tracks and ballads are heralded as the festival’s highlights. And for all die-hard rockabilly devotees out there, there’ll be an immersive amphitheater music show featuring loads of authentic swingy tunes and dazzling costumes. Day program tickets cost 150 rub, while the evening music show will cost you 500 rub. Kids up to 7 years old get free admission (woo-hoo).
The party continues on Sunday August 26 with a spectacular celebration of Russian classical music. Dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 145th birthday anniversary, the ‘Day of Russian Music’ will be held on the Arts Square starting at midday. There’ll be several marquees dedicated to different music genres the great composer lended his talent to. The fete will conclude at 8pm with a magnificent gala concert of the Taurida State Symphony orchestra conducted by the musical polymath Mikhail Golikov and star-studded with lead singers from Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky theaters.
And if you feel a bit blasé about the conventional musical gatherings, don’t forget that the ‘Summer Music Park’ festival we wrote about last week is still ongoing: held in the blossoming St. Petersburg Botanical Garden on August 24-26, this open-air festival offers an exciting pot-pourri of all kinds of musical styles. This Saturday’s program invites you to explore opera all-timers together with top-ranked Mariinsky theater soloists Oksana Shilova and Alexander Trofimov, while on Sunday you can listen to an assortment of popular movie soundtracks performed by the A Tempo symphonic orchestra. Verdi’s La Traviata and John Williams’s classic scores from the Harry Potter and Star Wars sagas – don’t mind if we do. Tickets are cheaper when bought in advance and start from 1,000 rub per person (but you can chip in with two of your friends and buy a joint ticket for 2500 rub). Concerts start at 9pm.
Cinema
An offer that you cannot refuse: on August 23-26, the Rodina movie theater is hosting a gala screening of one of cinema’s most timeless classics, The Godfather. The only downside is that only the last part of the trilogy is shown during the weekend, on Sunday August 26 to be precise. You’ll have to start the Godfather journey as early as on Thursday 23 August for a full catch-up; the second part is screened on Friday August 24. On the plus side, all movies start at 8pm, so you may have the time to sneak in after work or classes. Tickets cost 400 rub. Films are shown in English with Russian subtitles.
This year’s country-wide ‘Night of Cinema’ celebrates (perhaps a bit prematurely) contemporary Russian cinema. On Saturday August 25 you can attend free screenings of Russian films at the Rodina, Voskhod, Lenfilm, and Chaika movie theaters. Please note that these are shown in Russian and you’ll need to register here to attend the Lenfilm screenings. The program includes Russian folklore-inspired fantasy The Last Knight (Последний богатырь), sci-fi drama The Frontier (Рубеж), and the WW2 adventure film The Tanks (Танки). The Russian Museum will host an exclusive premiere of two biographical films dedicated to the king of marine art, Ivan Aivazovsky, while Chaika will present an anthology of indie featurettes called ‘From Russia With Love’.
Have a great weekend! Yours truly, ITMO.NEWS
