To mark the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation to the Soviet Union, Vladimir Varnava, winner of the prestigious Golden Mask Theatre Award, staged the Stony Bank one-act ballet at the Leonid Yacobson Ballet Theatre. The production was inspired by the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial in Budapest, which honours the memory of Holocaust victims.

This makes the ballet a special tribute to those who lost their lives during that dark time. 'The duty of remembrance is the main reason why we are working on this ballet today. In this case, the Danube bank is a sort of a mythic location that allows us to recreate the emotional charge of dramatic events and to paint images of people who have faced pain and loss'.