Sergei Ostrenko

Biography

Sergei Ostrenko is a director, choreographer and teacher. He has spent over thirty years in professional theatre working with multicultural groups of performers, exploring world theatre traditions and their impact on contemporary theatre. Ostrenko has vast directing experience in different genres. He also dedicated ten years of work in dance theatre. 

His professional career in theatre started in 1979,
after graduating from the Academy of Arts Ostrenko
begins working as a stage designer. His passion to the arts first inspired by the fascinating painting lessons of his grandfather, an artist and musician, and continuous keen interest in actor's training techniques
eventually led him to the world of professional theatre. Ostrenko continues his education as an actor and later as a director.

Ostrenko also studied contemporary techniques of performing arts: Laban, Alexander, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Suzuki, Contact and Structural Improvisation, Kinetic Environment, Butoh, method of Eugenio Barba, psychology of communication and psychology of creation. 

Since 1994 Ostrenko has been running the scientific research project "Creative Laboratory“ jointly with the group of professional psychologists, actors, directors, dancers, and choreographers. The main directions of the Laboratory research are the practical investigation of improvisation and spontaneity in performing arts, the development of methods leading to group cohesion and impelling the group to the active creative process. In 1990s Ostrenko Lab in Riga laid the practical foundation for the development of professional Dance Movement Therapy in Latvia.  

Since 2000 Ostrenko has been working at the International University "Global Theatre Experience"
(IUGTE). Since 2009 Ostrenko is the Head of the Russian Theatre Department of IUGTE.

Ostrenko has experience of many years as a teacher at different institutes of higher education - Latvian State Conservatoire (Riga, Latvia), Latvian Academy of Culture (Riga, Latvia), the Latvian branch of Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS), Rosebud School for the Arts (Rosebud, Canada), the University of Calgary (Calgary, Canada) and others.

The students of Ostrenko describe his training as "intensive, saturated and consecutive", the atmosphere of his work as "conducive to exploration, demanding alert involvement and personal investment in the process", "he seemed to be encouraging a particular way of seeing, of feeling and of being...". As a teacher and practitioner, Ostrenko is very demanding, first of all to himself. He pays great attention to his physical training and further education. He continues attending performing arts programmes in different countries. Since 1980s Ostrenko has been studying Tai Chi Chuan Chen style which today is the basis of his daily personal physical training.

Along with teaching theatre methods, since 1986 
Ostrenko has been continuously teaching Chen style at three levels: for dancers, choreographers and actors as additional movement training, for advanced as martial art, and for beginners as salubrious gymnastics.

At present the principal professional interest of Ostrenko is investigation of theatre methods between tradition and contemporaneity. International theatre projects under his direction take place in different countries: Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Austria, Malta, and the United Kingdom.