Irina S. Zhushchikhovskaya is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnology of Peoples of the Far East, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok. She is a specialist in ancient pottery and has published over 150 works on prehistoric ceramics.

Natalia K. Danilova is Senior Researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Ethnography, Institute of Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science, Yakutsk. Her fields of scientific interest include mythology, ritual culture, and sacred geography of the native peoples of Siberia. She is the author of more than 100 publications.

Translator: Richard L. Bland, a retired Arctic archaeologist and translator, has translated over 250 articles and books, primarily from Russian and German, into English, including The Peoples of Ancient Siberia: An Archeological History by A. P. Okladnikov and Warfare in the Russian Arctic by A. K. Nefedkin, and the three-volume Russian Colonization of Alaska by A. V. Grinev.

Jon W. Tuttle is Distinguished Professor of English at Francis Marion University, specializing in Modern and American Drama. He is also Director of University Honors, the Nellie Cooke Sparrow Writer-in-Residence, and an FMU Trustees Research Scholar. He has received the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities and both the Founders Award and Lifetime Service Award from South Carolina Theater Association. He has served on the boards of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Florence Regional Arts Alliance, and the Jasper Project. For over a decade, he was Playwright-in-Residence and Literary Manager at Trustus Theater in Columbia, South Carolina. He is the editor of David Kranes: Selected Plays.

Peter Martins was the Ballet Master in Chief of New York City Ballet for 35 years, the only person to preside over the company as long as its founder, George Balanchine. Born in Denmark, Martins began his association with NYCB in 1967, when he was invited to dance the title role in George Balanchine’s Apollo during the company’s appearance at the Edinburgh Festival. He then performed as a guest artist for three years before joining the company as a principal dancer in 1970. Prior to his retirement from dancing in 1983, Martins performed a wide variety of roles and was lauded for his outstanding partnering skills and noble stage presence. In 1981, Martins was named Ballet Master, a title he shared with Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and John Taras. From 1983 to 1989, he served as Co-Ballet Master in Chief with Robbins, running day-to-day operations. He assumed sole directorship of the company in 1990 and was also Chairman of the Faculty of the School of American Ballet, NYCB’s official school. In 2000, founded the New York Choreographic Institute.
Martins began his career as a choreographer in 1977. He has created nearly 90 ballets set to music by composers as diverse as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Wynton Marsalis, and John Adams. His full-length productions for New York City Ballet include The Sleeping Beauty (1991), Swan Lake (1999), Romeo + Juliet (2007), and La Sylphide (2015). Martins’ autobiography, Far From Denmark, was published in 1982. Among other awards, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark made him a Knight of Dannebrog, a Knight of the First Order, and, in 2013, a Commander of the Knights of Dannebrog, Denmark’s highest civilian honor. In 2008, the French government made him a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letter. That same year, Martins was inducted into the National Museum of Dance’s Hall of Fame, in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Liudmila V. Lbova is Professor of at the Graduate School of International Relations at the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.
Pavel V. Volkov is Docent and Lead Researcher at Novosibirsk State University.

Translator: Richard L. Bland is Archeologist (retired) with the U.S. National Park Service, Heritage Research Associates, and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon.

James Charnley is the author of Creative License and Art and Adversity. He studied Fine Art and Art History at Manchester, Chelsea and Leeds Polytechnic. During a peripatetic career he learned furniture making and set design, worked in broadcast television and film animation, scripted and produced videos and, most recently, worked on joinery commissions. Such occupations funded his writing and other creative projects. James Charnley lives in Preston with his partner Louise and a lazy, ginger cat named Rodger.

Alexander Adams is a British artist and writer. He studied fine art and art history at Goldsmiths College, London. His art has been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), National Museum Cardiff, Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), and other museums. His art criticism has been published in The Burlington Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Sculpture Journal, The Jackdaw, The British Art Journal, Apollo, Printmaking Today, Print Quarterly, and other outlets. His poetry has been published in anthologies, broadsides, and single-author volumes. He has been artist-in-residence at the Albers Foundation and is the recipient of the 2018 Artist Scholarship from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, in Monaco. Adams is the author of Culture War, Iconoclasm: Identity Politics and the Erasure of History, Degas, Magritte, and Artivism.

Marty Roth is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Minnesota.

Professor of Film Studies, Triton College