Delegation of more than 120 people from different cities of Belarus – Minsk, Soligorsk, Vileika, Pogost – on April 30 and May 1, 2023 visited the great Russian city of St. Petersburg under the leadership of the Belarusian Professional Dance League within the framework of the program “St. Petersburg – the Cultural Capital of the Commonwealth 2023” and was timed to celebrate the 320th anniversary of St. Petersburg and the first anniversary of the RPA “BPDL”.
For representatives of the Belarusian delegation there were concert divertissements and meetings with the People’s art collective ballroom dance ensemble “Baltic Star” of the Cultural and Leisure Center “Moskovsky”, the Model Ballroom Dance Collective “On Poklonnaya”, the Ballroom Collective “Leningrad Seniors” of the House of Folk Art and other groups of the city.
On May 1, 2023, the House of Folk Art organized a Scientific and practical conference “Issues of value attitude to ballroom choreographic culture”, where specialists and leaders of dance groups from Belarus and St. Petersburg discussed topical issues of ballroom movement development, agreed on the possibility of concluding an agreement on further cooperation and the creation of a creative association of ballroom movement specialists from the two countries. The conference was attended by Lidia Petrovna Kats-Lazareva, Anton Antonovich Gapanovich, Elena Alexandrovna Sergeeva and Liudmila Nikolaevna Tsyrkun from the Belarusian side and specialists from St. Petersburg, including the legend of ballroom dancing and sports Oliadia Tugankova. The event was held with the support of the St. Petersburg Culture Committee and the direct guidance of the chairman of the City Methodical Association of heads of ballroom dance groups of the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “House of Folk Art and Leisure”, laureate of the II All-Union competition of ballroom dancers – Valery Valentinovich Matveev.
Within the framework of the excursion program the members of the delegation made a pilgrimage visit to the Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Lavra, got acquainted with the history of the city, visited the Peter and Paul Fortress, where the guard of honor of the cadet corps and the youth of the ballroom dance ensemble of Soligorsk honored the memory and laid flowers at the memorial stele of heroic Leningrad climbers, who during the years of siege hardship covered the spire and dome of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and other architectural shrines of Leningrad.
