The art of being free must be taught from infancy[Искусству Быть Свободным Надо Учить С Яслей]

This conversation with the senior teacher of the Moscow State Academy of Choreography Tamila Bulgakova took place during one of the educational intensives of the “Golden Ratio” Fund for supporting gifted children and youth of the Sverdlovsk Region. Such an eminent practitioner (Tamila Vladimirovna used to be a ballet soloist of the “Classical Ballet” Moscow State Academic Theater for over ten years), moreover, the author of the method of teaching “Acting”, is a real find for an educational institution at regional level. However, as the “Golden Ratio” admitted, there is no need to persuade Tamila Vladimirovna Bulgakova: she is happy to spend her own leave working with provincial Ural children in the out-of-Ekaterinburg educational center. Why? As it turned out, there is a long-standing “sect” of the “Acting” subject proponents in the Russian theatrical environment. They believe that acting should be taught from an early age: if not to everyone, but to many. This will help to avoid the sometimes terrible suffering that mature actors experience. Public professions are a difficult test for individuals, and training should start from an early age. Tamila Bulgakova is of such opinion, as are some of her colleagues. Their position seems to be logical, the arguments are substantial, but ... Both in Soviet times, and today “Acting” as a subject is available only in specialist vocational institutions, and even here it appears only in the middle of training. Our talk with Tamila Vladimirovna Bulgakova is on what early development of acting techniques gives a child, on difficulties of working with gifted children and on how to help a child from a remote province feel like a “globally minded person” and at the same time maintain love and devotion to the “small homeland”.