Ukraine invasion & the arts: Gergiev fired by his agent, etc.

[Drew]

7 hours ago, Buddy said:

And then there's the possibility that what most ballet dancers (and most Russians in general) do, has little or nothing to do with Putin.

For me, the gala in Crimea is hard to see as no more than ballet-business as usual. As anyone reading this website likely knows, Crimea was annexed by Putin's regime just 8 years ago. Dancers can't participate there in a gala  without de facto supporting his policies toward Ukraine--policies which include concrete plans for the arts in Crimea; they can't do so especially when Russia is in the middle of a war (or, if you prefer, "special Military operation") against the rest of Ukraine. To dance there is actively to help support Putin's plans whatever one's personal feelings about the matter. I don't know the pressures the dancers are under -- and anyway I do NOT expect most Russian artists either to see Putin as a villain OR to fall on their swords if they do. (All over the world most people live out some ideological contradictions in their lives.) But dancing at a gala in Crimea at the present time can't help but be bound up with Putin's policies these days.

(And Taras Bulba? an excerpt from a ballet based on a Russian novel about Cossack warriors for Ukrainian freedom? That's some choice whoever picked it.)

Edited August 8, 2022 by Drew

[Buddy]

This is fair enough, Drew. Thank you. And my comment may seem more abrupt that it should.

My overall feeling is that folks go on leading their normal lives, or trying to, as best they can and this is what is most important to them.

 

[pherank]

United Ukrainian Ballet’s Giselle premiered at the Castellum Theater in Alphen, Netherlands. Alexei Ratmansky choreographed this version of the ballet. Ticket profits are being donated to charity (DEC Ukraine Appeal and The United Ukrainian Ballet Foundation).

https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNPaRmodNN/

https://ukrainegiselle.com/

[volcanohunter]

Dance producer Paul Godfrey, currently working on bringing the United Ukrainian Ballet and Ratmansky's Giselle to London, has a more inside view than most:

"By the mid 1990s Godfrey was working with the Kirov and Bolshoi, managing their tours to the Coliseum and the Opera House, overseeing both technical production and management.

During a period of 10 years or so Godfrey brought many Russian and Eastern European ballet companies to the UK and produced around 150 performances a year.

When the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, Godfrey knew it would be the end of an era for his work. 'Like everyone else I tried to persuade myself that the war wasn’t going to happen. I was due to be working with the Bolshoi and had a tour lined up which was cancelled.

'Simply put, on 24 February 2022, it was goodbye to 35 years of my life. I knew I would never get to work with the Bolshoi again. There was no time for sadness, regret or doubt.

'Those relationships would change. A huge number of people left Russia, but many are there still there keeping quiet and unable to speak.'

[...]

Godfrey is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and for the [UUB] dance company. 'Of course the long-term goal is to disband, we don’t want to keep everyone as refugees, but at least these dancers will go back home having worked with some of the world’s top coaches and choreographers.'"

https://www.thejc.com/life-and-culture/all/dancing-for-ukraine-ballet-company-made-up-of-refugees-from-the-war-to-perform-giselle-at-the-london-coliseum-2LFZGizpPIgPZ9mz9zza9n

Edited August 27, 2022 by volcanohunter
formatting

[Drew]

12 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Dance producer Paul Godfrey, currently working on bringing the United Ukrainian Ballet and Ratmansky's Giselle to London, has a more inside view than most:

"By the mid 1990s Godfrey was working with the Kirov and Bolshoi, managing their tours to the Coliseum and the Opera House, overseeing both technical production and management.

During a period of 10 years or so Godfrey brought many Russian and Eastern European ballet companies to the UK and produced around 150 performances a year.

When the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, Godfrey knew it would be the end of an era for his work. 'Like everyone else I tried to persuade myself that the war wasn’t going to happen. I was due to be working with the Bolshoi and had a tour lined up which was cancelled.

'Simply put, on 24 February 2022, it was goodbye to 35 years of my life. I knew I would never get to work with the Bolshoi again. There was no time for sadness, regret or doubt.

'Those relationships would change. A huge number of people left Russia, but many are there still there keeping quiet and unable to speak.'

[...]

Godfrey is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and for the [UUB] dance company. 'Of course the long-term goal is to disband, we don’t want to keep everyone as refugees, but at least these dancers will go back home having worked with some of the world’s top coaches and choreographers.'"

https://www.thejc.com/life-and-culture/all/dancing-for-ukraine-ballet-company-made-up-of-refugees-from-the-war-to-perform-giselle-at-the-london-coliseum-2LFZGizpPIgPZ9mz9zza9n

Thank you for the information about the article and link....

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Drew

[Buddy]

I think that this is probably worth mentioning here. A personal sadness for me, but just one opinion from billions.

From the New York Times

Mikhail S. Gorbachev Reformist Soviet Leader Is Dead at 91

Mr. Gorbachev made no public statement of his own about the war in Ukraine, though his foundation on Feb. 26 called for a “speedy cessation of hostilities.” A friend of his, the radio journalist Aleksei A. Venediktov, said in a July interview that Mr. Gorbachev was “upset” about the war, viewing it as having undermined “his life’s work.”

When he came to power, Mr. Gorbachev was a loyal son of the Communist Party, but one who had come to see things with new eyes. “We cannot live this way any longer,” he told Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who would become his trusted foreign minister, in 1984. Within five years he had overturned much that the party held inviolable.

A man of openness, vision and great vitality…

[And the other side of the coin]

But if Mr. Gorbachev was lionized abroad as having helped change the world — he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 — he was vilified at home as having failed to live up to the promise of economic change. It became widely said that in a free vote, Mr. Gorbachev could be elected president anywhere but the Soviet Union.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-dead.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20220830&instance_id=70652&nl=updates-from-the-newsroom&regi_id=156452945&segment_id=102784&te=1&user_id=f8301819ca07cba02501493f2f306919

[volcanohunter]

Let's not forget that Gorbachev tried to cover up the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl plant, and hundreds of thousands of people, who hadn't been told what happened, marched in May Day parades in irradiated towns and cities. He sent tanks into Vilnius in an attempt to thwart Lithuanian independence and ordered the violent dispersal of protests in Riga, Tbilisi and Almaty.

Edited August 31, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Buddy]

I can’t really deny or confirm these facts, Volcanohunter, but, yes, this world can be less than perfect at times. About Chernobyl, the New York Times article does say,

“While he equivocated at first, he eventually exposed the nuclear power-plant disaster at Chernobyl to public scrutiny, a display of candor unheard-of in the Soviet Union.” *

I guess one thing that made an immediate impression on me the first time that I went to Russia almost twenty years ago was how different it felt and looked from all the old Stalinist imagery that I grew up with. Folks were much freer behaving, open and attractive. I would go to the Mariinsky, especially the new one, and feel like I was in Lincoln Center. I considered this good, still do, and have to attribute much of this to him.

I probably won’t continue my discussion here if it’s going to drift into pure politics, but part of the good feelings that I always had at the ballet performances and beyond I would also have to at least in part attribute to him.

* Added: The lengthy Times article does offer further on a rather impressive list of things that it considers his very worthwhile accomplishments.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Buddy

[volcanohunter]

 I'm sure the relevant news reports can be accessed from the NYT.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded. The following day Sweden, not the USSR, reported elevated radiation. On May 1, 1986, May Day parades took place in Ukraine and Belarus despite the radioactive cloud hovering overhead. It would be difficult to overestimate how much the handling of the disaster undermined public trust in the Soviet government. 

In December 1986 he replaced the head of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR with an ethnic Russian with absolutely no connection to Kazakhstan. The protests that followed were quelled a few days later, but it's still unclear exactly how many protesters were killed.

On January 11, 1991, Soviet Army tanks from Pskov rolled into Lithuania. Lithuanians refer to January 13, 1991, as Bloody Sunday. It was civilians against the military.  January 13th is marked annually in Lithuania as Defenders of Freedom Day. The casualties were miniscule compared to what is happening in Ukraine now, but it nevertheless was an armed attempt to force Lithuania back into the USSR.

Russians despise Gorbachev for "losing" their empire and the economic chaos and lawlessness that followed his rule. Other peoples who lived in the USSR despise him for his clumsy attempts to deny them their independence. 

Edited August 31, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Fosca]

Shouldn't we attribute the opening of the repertoire that happened in the Soviet ballet companies the early 1990s to Gorbachev's glasnost? The premieres of the Ballets Russes pieces like Sheherazade, Spectre de la Rose at the Mariinsky in the 1990s, the first Balanchine pieces in the Mariinsky repertoire (I guess Scotch Symphony was the first)? Would that have been possible without the openness that glasnost brought to the Soviet Union? You may argue that the further opening to Ashton, Neumeier, Forsythe etc. was detrimental to their purity of style, but the Diaghilev ballets were perfect for them, I loved these evenings. And Jewels looks great when danced by the Russians.

 

[Fosca]

1 hour ago, volcanohunter said:

Russians despise Gorbachev for "losing" their empire and the economic chaos and lawlessness that followed his rule. Other peoples who lived in the USSR despise him for his clumsy attempts to deny them their independence. 

Germans are eternally grateful for a peaceful reunion of their country. When the protests in the streets grew louder in Eastern Germany in the 1980s, Gorbachev did not send tanks and troups like Brezhnev did in Czechoslovakia in 1968, but he paved the way to a solution without bloodshed. There was no war, 300 000 Soviet Soldiers left the country. Imagine if Putin was like that.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Fosca
typo

[Buddy]

Just now, Fosca said:

Shouldn't we attribute the opening of the repertoire that happened in the Soviet ballet companies the early 1990s to Gorbachev's glasnost? The premieres of the Ballets Russes pieces like Sheherazade, Spectre de la Rose at the Mariinsky in the 1990s, the first Balanchine pieces in the Mariinsky repertoire (I guess Scotch Symphony was the first)? Would that have been possible without the openness that glasnost brought to the Soviet Union? You may argue that the further opening to Ashton, Neumeier, Forsythe etc. was detrimental to their purity of style, but the Diaghilev ballets were perfect for them, I loved these evenings. And Jewels looks great when danced by the Russians.

 

Good points, Fosca. Thank you.

Something else maybe to consider. Would Ballet Alert!’s forums Kirov-Mariinsky Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet, etc. have nearly the following or the interest, or would even the world’s level of following and interest exist, if it weren’t for these actions.

 

[volcanohunter]

8 hours ago, Fosca said:

Germans are eternally grateful for a peaceful reunion of their country.

Yes, this accounts for the diversity of reactions to Gorbachev's death.

Tbilisi in 1989

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-11-mn-1600-story.html

Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, even though what happened in Azerbaijan at the beginning of that year was an unholy mess.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-23-mn-590-story.html

I get the uncomfortable feeling that since there was no violent crackdown against central Europeans, people lionize Gorbachev, overlooking what happened further east, because it happened to lesser humans.

As for ballet, Londoners queued for days for Bolshoi tickets in 1956, when Gorbachev was working for the Komsomol in Stavropol. By 2019 the queues were long gone, and the presenters were offering a discount on Bright Stream tickets. 

I absolutely acknowledge that Balanchine first entered the Kirov repertoire in the late 1980s, in what, I suppose, was an attempt to repatriate him. 

Edited August 31, 2022 by volcanohunter

[pherank]

IMO, Gorbachev was a pragmatist - but in the 'Old Russian Style', which did not preclude force of arms when that was called for by the Kremlin hawks. I doubt that makes him a humanitarian. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to politicians who make humanitarian 'gestures', shall we say, but that's about as much as we get from most of our politicians.

Edited August 31, 2022 by pherank

[Buddy]

I still have to say, Pherank, that Russia was a much friendlier and more appealing place when I arrived there about twenty years ago than I ever could have imagined from all the years of documentaries, news viewing, tourist reports and general conversation. Although I didn’t follow the news that carefully at the time, I would have to attribute a significant part of this to him and the more humanitarian direction that things were moving related to him.

I remember a news report that Gorbachev was at a public event in Russia and a heckler followed him yelling that Gorbachev has destroyed the Soviet Union. Gorbachev turned around and responded, “Remember, I’m the one who gave you the right to say that.” I would guess that there’s got to be some truth there.

As far as the ballet is concerned, the more openness of these times, I think had some very beneficial effects in Russia and worldwide. The world had a chance to become fully acquainted with some of the finest ballet quality ever (the Russian ballet) and the quality level in Russia was reinforced because of the resulting recognition and it was also a chance for the Russian ballet to broaden its horizons.

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Buddy

[Fosca]

6 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I get the uncomfortable feeling that since there was no violent crackdown against central Europeans, people lionize Gorbachev, overlooking what happened further east, because it happened to lesser humans.

By being grateful for a politician from the country of Stalin who made at least one decision to be human and pragmatical instead of chosing violence I'm not declaring other people to be lesser humans.

 

[volcanohunter]

I'm certainly not accusing you of that! But I can see from reactions by people who actually lived under Gorbachev that they really bristle at the hagiographies being printed about him, because they get the sense that the deaths of their compatriots are ignored and count for nothing, and because they are sick and tired of facile westsplaining by people who never experienced what they did. (An especially easy trap to fall into when observing comfortably from across an ocean.)

If Gorbachev is being lauded for a "bloodless" end to the Cold War, I have to point out that it was not bloodless, that he advocated "openness" but sometimes resorted to obscurantism when the former really mattered, and that he "refrained from violence," except when he didn't. 

Edited September 1, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Buddy]

Spoiler

 

This might not be as off topic as it might seem. 

"Ukraine: How Kyiv's electronic dance culture is defying Putin with beats and baseball bats. Take a look."

[I did think this to say "baseball caps" when I first read it, which is more appealing to me anyway.]

https://www.reuters.com/world/kyiv-ravers-escape-horrors-war-through-music-2022-08-30/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/world/asia/kyiv-ukraine-war-nightlife.html

This is from Twitter, if you can get it.

https://www.insider.com/photos-kyivs-nightlife-slowly-returns-russian-invasion-2022-9

Edited September 5, 2022 by Buddy

[Buddy]

I’d like to add this. Is it really that different from all the things that we are writing about at our various topics ?

"I think that this (event) can give people who went through very tragic experiences a certain feeling of freedom, and a feeling that life actually goes on and will be beautiful," Anastasiia Lukoshyna, a 21-year-old student, told Reuters.

Reuters

https://www.insider.com/photos-kyivs-nightlife-slowly-returns-russian-invasion-2022-9

 

"It was dark, sweaty, loud and wonderful. Here was a country locked in a war that touched every person in the room but still, they were dancing their hearts out."

New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/world/asia/kyiv-ukraine-war-nightlife.html

 

[volcanohunter]

The London Ballet Circle is hosting a Zoom conversation with Ratmansky tomorrow, September 7th, at 7:00 pm BST/2:00 pm Eastern. Tickets for non members cost £5.

[pherank]

Ratmansky's latest Instagram posting:

Wherever in the world I go now - since February I have been to San-Francisco, Munich, Dresden, Sydney, Melbourne, New York, The Hague, Amsterdam, Madrid, Seattle and London - in every city I see flags and other symbols of Ukraine everywhere. It seems the whole civilized world is supporting Ukraine and it warms my heart. As my friend Kyoko from Japan said, the more Putin tries to destroy Ukraine and its culture, the more it is present in the world. Next week the United Ukrainian Ballet, a remarkable company of dancers who fled the war, will perform my production of Giselle at the London Coliseum. Many caring people contributed to this project, I want to hug them all. And in two weeks Pacific Northwest Ballet will premiere my new ballet, set to the music of the outstanding Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, in Seattle. It is called 'Wartime Elegy'.
СЛАВА УКРАЇНІ!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CiJWB47KnoL/

[volcanohunter]

His colleagues are reporting that Oleksandr Shapoval, formerly a leading soloist of the National Ballet of Ukraine, who danced with the company from 1993 to 2021 and subsequently taught partnering at the Kyiv Ballet School, was killed in battle early this morning in the Donetsk region.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CianuWMoy4T/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CiacYFTDR05/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CiabdnjIMwI/

https://ksbc.com.ua/news/novini-koledgu/z-bolem-u-serczі-povіdomlyaєmo-pro-vtratu-v-nashіj-baletnіj-rodinі

Edited September 12, 2022 by volcanohunter

[pherank]

On 9/12/2022 at 11:26 AM, volcanohunter said:

His colleagues are reporting that Oleksandr Shapoval, formerly a leading soloist of the National Ballet of Ukraine, who danced with the company from 1993 to 2021 and subsequently taught partnering at the Kyiv Ballet School, was killed in battle early this morning in the Donetsk region.

Sadly inevitable, as this conflict grinds on.

[volcanohunter]

Norman Lebrecht reports that Yuriy Kerpatenko, previously a conductor of the Kherson Musical-Dramatic Theater, has been killed by Russian soldiers occupying the city.

https://slippedisc.com/2022/10/horror-ukrainian-conductor-is-reportedly-murdered-by-russians/

[volcanohunter]

The writer Boris Akunin (pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili) has announced that as part of a new policy to purge Russian culture of those who have left the country, his name has been removed from his plays in the repertoire of the Russian Young Theater in Moscow (this is the one that stands between the Bolshoi new stage and the Bolshoi's main box office next to the subway station) and the Alexandrinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg. Evidently, the plays can stay as long as their author is not mentioned, and this satisfies those who complained about Akunin's continued, unpatriotic presence in the repertoire.

https://www.currenttime.tv/a/imya-akunina-ubrali-s-afish-nekotoryh-teatrov/32094710.html

At the Bolshoi, Yuri Possokhov's Nureyev has been removed from the repertoire list. The names of Kirill Serebrennikov, who directed A Hero of Our Time, and Alexander Molochnikov, who directed The Seagull--both of whom have left Russia--have been removed from the credits of those ballets. Molochnikov's scheduled productions of Rachmaninoff's Francesca da Rimini and Zemlinsky's Eine florentinische Tragödie had already been canceled.

https://2011.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/813/
https://2011.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/16661/

A Hero of Our Time has not been performed since December 2020, and The Seagull has not been performed for six months, despite being a new production. Presumably, this is a way of returning the ballets to the stage. The Bolshoi is facing an imminent deficit in its repertoire as licensing agreements expire one by one. Symphony in C, Etudes, The Cage, Forgotten Land and Artifact Suite are among the ballets that have already been removed, and last weekend on social media, Bolshoi dancers were publicly mourning their last performances of Onegin.

Now all those souvenir programs for Hero and Seagull will have to be reprinted without the interviews with Serebrennikov and Molochnikov.

I could say that I would be disappointed with Possokhov for agreeing to this, but truthfully I am way past that, because the simple fact is that he alone among foreign-based choreographers continues to work in Russia. His Nutcracker will premiere at the Stanislavsky Theater in late November, and his Queen of Spades will premiere at the Bolshoi in June.

The only other new productions the Bolshoi Ballet is presenting this season are revivals of Chopiniana and the Paquita divertissement on a double bill. Well, that's innovative!

Edited October 22, 2022 by volcanohunter