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

[volcanohunter]

In other news, Bolshoi general director Vladimir Urin has testified before a committee of the State Duma that the company is in danger of running out of pointe shoes because its import license requests have been refused, and local alternatives are subpar.

https://moskvichmag.ru/gorod/gendirektor-bolshogo-teatra-soobshhil-chto-iz-za-sanktsij-baleriny-ostalis-bez-puantov/
https://news.ru/culture/baleriny-bolshogo-teatra-ostalis-bez-obuvi/

A lot of dancers in Russia wear Gaynor Mindens in particular.

https://dancer.com/ambassadors/icons/

The TV network affilated with the Russian army was quick to dispute this claim, with Nikolai Tsiskaridze stating that the Bolshoi used to have its own footwear workshops, but that these were "destroyed" rather than modernized and that dancers were deliberately made dependent on foreign footwear. (Naturally, he says he warned everyone that this would happen.)

Evgenia Obraztsova also claimed that foreign pointes, Gaynors in particular, have deteriorated in quality. So I guess she's not a Gaynor Minden ambassador anymore? (In recent years I have read lots of comments from dancers that the shoes have indeed become worse since the Gaynor factory was moved to Bosnia.)

And naturally the Grishko factory insists it's ready to step into the breach. As if switching shoe brands were that easy.

https://tvzvezda.ru/news/202210141917-vD5Za.html

Edited October 22, 2022 by volcanohunter
additional link

[Drew]

I knew some of this but not all--thanks for the information. 

 

[volcanohunter]

As Sarah Kaufman wrote today, the truly outrageous thing is that Ratmansky’s name has been removed from the ballets he staged and choreographed, as though they were made by an unknown phantom. Suddenly Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, The Little Humpbacked Horse and Anna Karenina have no choreographer, and Giselle, Le Corsaire and Flames of Paris magically appeared fully formed without a producer. This is priceless: a Ratmansky evening at the Mariinsky--his name is right there in the video clip--but the choreographer is no longer identified in the credits.

It would be one thing simply to stop performing Ratmansky's ballets. But to continue performing them without acknowledging who created them is unconscionable. Knowing what Ratmansky contributed to Le Corsaire, can Yuri Burlaka really return to the Bolshoi to restage his Paquita in good conscience? Regardless of his political views, how can Possokhov work in an institution so cynical, that it not only ignores a choreographer's request that it stop presenting his works, but then goes on performing them without even naming him? How can any self-respecting choreographer work there? How can dancers participate in this lie?

I've seen a lot of Bolshoi performances in my lifetime, far fewer by the Mariinsky. I cannot imagine attending another ever again. Ballet in Russia has become some sort of thuggish, looting Blacklist/Stalinist nightmare.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. If Russian soldiers steal washing machines and toilets, why wouldn’t Russian theaters rob creators of their due?

"It is illegal, yes, but what is legal in Russia after February 24?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/10/21/bolshoi-cancels-alexei-ratmansky/

Edited October 22, 2022 by volcanohunter
broken links

[volcanohunter]

Judith Flanders is hopping mad.

Edited October 26, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Buddy]

This is something that may or may not have been mentioned. From CBS 60 Minutes….

“Tonight, an update on a story from last May, "Ballet In Exile.” ”

“American philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, and once the focus of a 60 Minutes profile, was watching. His foundation has granted more than a million dollars to help support the exiled Ukrainian dancers.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ballet-in-exile-update-60-minutes-2022-10-30/

(thanks to Jan McNulty at BalletcoForum)

[California]

1 minute ago, Buddy said:

This is something that may or may not have been mentioned. From CBS 60 Minutes….

“Tonight, an update on a story from last May, "Ballet In Exile.” ”

“American philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, and once the focus of a 60 Minutes profile, was watching. His foundation has granted more than a million dollars to help support the exiled Ukrainian dancers.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ballet-in-exile-update-60-minutes-2022-10-30/

(thanks to Jan McNulty at BalletcoForum)

Wow - this is such great news. All the more so, as we keep seeing the daily destruction of Ukraine. A very good way for American philanthropists to use their money!

[Buddy]

Yes, California, it does seem like a fine gesture which hopefully will do a lot of good for a group of artists that can certainly use some help at the moment.

[pherank]

The mysterious artist Banksy has painted 7 murals in Ukraine:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck1bqL6MsMu/

[Deflope]

Is the artistic blacklisting easing up?   Patrick De Bana has recently gone to Moscow to choreograph pieces and Zakharova along with Korsuntsev and Pavlenko appeared in a gala in Japan.  

[volcanohunter]

I've read lots of crazy stuff coming out of Russia, but this made my head spin. Speeches at a round table called "The consolidation of culture for our victory. Topical issues in the creation of a united cultural front in Russia." Welcome to North Korea Lite.

Film director Andrei Konchalovsky: "I think Russia has been called to preserve and not allow European culture to perish. Russia is not only the heir to the great European culture, today it is perhaps its only and chief defender... Russia will carry the banner of European civilization in the world."

[Good luck with that when nobody out there in the big, bad world sees your work.]

Conductor Valery Gergiev: "Only by uniting can we, cultural figures, resist the aggressive onslaught of an alien and diabolical anti-culture."

[Would that "diabolical anti-culture" also happen to be European? He didn't seem to have a problem with it a year ago.]

Actor Dmitri Pevtsov: "We need prohibitive measures, we need censorship, and, excuse me, we need expert advice." [I shudder to think who those "experts" would be.]

"But the most important thing is to nurture, to find those very new seeds and new shoots of modern Russian culture and art that already exist, which have already, here and there, broken through the concrete of these 30 years."

Concrete!

https://teatral-online.ru/news/32532/

Also, the anti "gay propaganda" law of 2013, which prohibited the promotion of all things LGTB to minors, is being expanded to cover adults as well. Supposedly it will protect the country from LGBT values, which is the "darkness" spread by the West. It remains to be seen what sort of effect this might have on art in Russia.

However: "It categorises any positive depictions of same-sex relationships in mass media or advertising under the same umbrella as distributing pornography, the promotion of violence, or stoking racial, ethnic and religious tensions.

"Advertising, books and films with positive presentations of LGBT people will be banned - raising concerns from publishers who have warned that it could affect classics of Russian literature."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63747732

Edited November 26, 2022 by volcanohunter

[volcanohunter]

A video report on Laura Fernandez in Tbilisi from Canada's CTV News, including rehearsal footage and tiny performance clips of Giselle.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2572415

[Drew]

15 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

A video report on Laura Fernandez in Tbilisi from Canada's CTV News, including rehearsal footage and tiny performance clips of Giselle.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2572415

Very interesting story -- thank you.

[Buddy]

This looks like a fine article from last March, which may not have been mentioned here.

“A former Bolshoi dancer is helping young dancers flee Ukraine, one ballet school at a time.”

“Kateryna is one of more than 80 young Ukrainian dancers who have found safe haven at prestigious ballet schools throughout Europe with the help of a New York-based nonprofit called Youth America Grand Prix, which has operated the world’s largest student ballet scholarship competition since 1999.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-03-21/dance-students-fleeting-ukraine-europe-ballet-school

 

[volcanohunter]

Today the Russian Ministry of Propaganda Culture published a list of priority topics for filmmakers who hope to receive state funding. These Include:

1. The preservation, creation and propagation of traditional values
4. Countering historical revisionism, Russia's peace keeping mission, Russia's historical victories, especially the 80th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War and the liberation mission of the Soviet soldier [The rape of Berlin]
5. Russia as a modern, stable and safe state with opportunities for development and self-realization
8. Russia's regions: the development of the Far East and Arctic, small-town and village life in the provinces, Little Russia [those parts of Ukraine subsumed by the Russian Empire] as a historical region of Russia [i.e., colonialism]
9. Screen adaptations of Russian literature, in particular as animated films [Personally, I'm waiting for the animated version of The House of the Dead.]
11. Popularization of the heroism and self-sacrifice of Russian soldiers during the "special military operation" [that is, the invasion of Ukraine: "Castration, gang-rape, forced nudity: How Russia’s soldiers are using sexual violence to terrorise Ukraine" Warning: 18+]
12. Popularization of service in the Russian Armed Forces
13. The spiritual, moral and patriotic formation of Russian citizens
14. The neo-colonial policies of Anglo-Saxon countries [Yes, the rulers of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex and East Anglia are real fiends.], the degradation of Europe, the formation of a multi-polar world
16. About teenagers: the formation of life values, information overload, learning to think for themselves []
17. Moral and ethical choices, civic duty, social cohesion

Other professions to be popularlized and made more prestigious include teachers (point 6), laborers and engineers (point 7) and doctors (point 10)

https://culture.gov.ru/press/news/minkultury_rossii_opredelilo_prioritetnye_temy_gospodderzhki_kinoproizvodstva_v_2023_godu/

Edited December 2, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Mashinka]

The Russians currently seem to have serious issues with "Anglo Saxons" and Satanists.  Do they mean us?  The English language in part derives from Anglo Saxon, but indigenous Brits are descended from Celts and Vikings too.  According to the latest census, in certain British towns and cities, white British people are in the minority.  The prime minister is of Indian descent and the current Foreign Secretary has a mother from Sierra Leone. Boris Johnson, two PM's back, was of Turkish descent.   Really Mr Putin, do keep up.

Satanism?  isn't that Hammer Horror, The Devil Rides out, that sort of stuff?  Again, Putin is behind the times as now more than a third of Brits declare themselves atheists, so if they don't believe in God they don't believe in his hellish counterpart either.  But then what can you expect from a man who is truly 'away with the fairies'.

[volcanohunter]

Following the deaths of Artem Datsyshyn and Oleksandr Shapoval, formerly leading soloists of the National Ballet of Ukraine, and Vadym Khlupyanets, a dancer at the National Operetta Theater, Serhiy Shkvarchenko, a soloist with the Virsky National Folk Dance Company of Ukraine, has been killed in battle.

 

(Irina Dvorovenko's parents were dancers with this company. Leonid Sarafanov is descended from two generations of Virsky dancers.)

Meanwhile, Oleksii Potiomkin, who had been in the field as a medic, has reunited with the National Ballet of Ukraine to dance Albrecht on tour in Paris. The run of Giselle begins today. 

 

Amazingly, another part of the company is touring Japan. There haven't been any flights out of Ukraine for nearly a year. Tours now involve long train and bus rides, and indirect routes.

A third contingent is performing at home between blackouts. A few years ago this wasn't unusual at Christmas. I have no idea how they are managing it now. 

A rehearsal for forthcoming performances of The Snow Queen:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmcAYbBAb_k/

[volcanohunter]

"International art experts say the plundering may be the single biggest collective art heist since the Nazis pillaged Europe in World War II.

"In Kherson, in Ukraine’s south, Ukrainian prosecutors and museum administrators say the Russians stole more than 15,000 pieces of fine art and one-of-a-kind artifacts. They dragged bronze statues from parks, lifted books from a riverside scientific library, boxed up the crumbling, 200-year-old bones of Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s lover, and even stole a raccoon from the zoo, leaving behind a trail of vacant cages, empty pedestals and smashed glass."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/world/asia/ukraine-art-russia-steal.html

[pherank]

On 1/14/2023 at 11:17 PM, volcanohunter said:

"International art experts say the plundering may be the single biggest collective art heist since the Nazis pillaged Europe in World War II.

"In Kherson, in Ukraine’s south, Ukrainian prosecutors and museum administrators say the Russians stole more than 15,000 pieces of fine art and one-of-a-kind artifacts. They dragged bronze statues from parks, lifted books from a riverside scientific library, boxed up the crumbling, 200-year-old bones of Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s lover, and even stole a raccoon from the zoo, leaving behind a trail of vacant cages, empty pedestals and smashed glass."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/world/asia/ukraine-art-russia-steal.html

The Russian government's admiration for Nazi conquest techniques is "fascinating". They learned a big lesson from WWII, but it apparently was the wrong lesson, imo.

[volcanohunter]

Artem Datsyshyn was among the earliest victims of the invasion. To mark what would have been his birthday, ballerina Elena Filipyeva posted a video of him dancing the Ali variation.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cn5GBAjoZqw/ 

[volcanohunter]

An extremely depressing report about theater in Russia

Quote

Last November, people crowded into the Moscow Art Theatre, unravelling scarves and checking fur coats. The theatre, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, was putting on a premiere of a new play written since the beginning of the war, and the hall was packed. In the story, a theatre is run by a star director who suddenly dies. His replacement, appointed by the culture ministry, comes to the job from the FSB. Brave, I thought. Until the message began to turn. Over the course of the performance, the theatre troupe is increasingly presented as sordid, paedophilic, corrupt. While the FSB graduate-turned-director is cruel, but clean and pure throughout.

Konstantin Bogomolov, the play’s director, sat in the audience. Husband to a woman believed to be Putin’s goddaughter, the 47-year-old’s work was clearly heralding the start of a new era in Russian culture, with new people and new authoritarian values centre stage. The play seemed to welcome it all, along with the disposal of the old order. The uproarious laughter of the audience at jokes about blackface and homophobic slurs was nauseating.

Similar changes were taking place elsewhere. The director of Moscow’s most important museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, was fired by the cultural ministry and replaced by Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of an FSB general, who had a career at state gas company Gazprom. “The vacuum left behind by those who fled the country or were blacklisted will be filled very quickly by those who are more loyal to everything going on,” Zhanna, the St Petersburg set designer, explained. “It’s just a question of how quickly it will happen.”

For Ivan, a director in St Petersburg, the damage feels total. “Russian theatre in recent years was truly the best in the world. We had learnt so much from Europe. We were soaring; it was soaring,” he said, as we met in a quiet café on the outskirts of St Petersburg. “And at the very moment when it was at its peak, it was cut down. It was dealt a fatal blow. We lost everything.”

Related. About a month ago the Bolshoi included Yuri Possokhov's A Hero of Our Time, which hadn't been performed since December 2020, in its schedule for May. Earlier this week ticket sales were suspended (as had happened before Alexei Ratmansky's The Art of the Fugue was canceled), and on Saturday the Bolshoi announced that Hero would be replaced by Edward Clug's Master and Margarita. The name of Kirill Serebrennikov, Hero's director (whatever that means in a ballet), librettist and scenic designer, had already been removed from the production. Possokhov allowed the same to be done to Alexander Molochnikov, the director and co-librettist of his Seagull. But in some quarters erasing Serebrennikov was not enough. For example, an article from Tsargrad, a TV channel that promotes ultra-conservative Russian Orthdox monarchist irredentism, Soviet nationalism and Putinism, came out swinging against the ballet with an article titled "To spit on Russia and profit from her: Have enemies captured the Bolshoi Theater?" It's safe to say that the author had never seen the ballet, but he contended that despite erasing the names of Serebrennikov and Molochnikov, they would still be paid royalties for the performances. (He wants to see The Seagull gone as well.)

https://tsargrad.tv/articles/plevat-v-rossiju-i-zarabatyvat-na-nej-vragi-zahvatili-bolshoj-teatr_743381

I don't think that Serebrennikov and Molochnikov are "starving" in the heathen West. Serebrennikov, at least, has lots of work. On the other hand, the Bolshoi is facing a repertoire crunch, with (most of) Ratmansky's ballets gone and licenses for works by foreign choreographers expiring one by one. Possokhov has remained loyal, and he apparently has no hesitations about throwing his collaborators under the bus. But the Bolshoi's pragmatism lost this battle against ideological purity. I suppose the ideologues are more honest than those who would simply blot out the names of "traitors" and "scum" while continuing to perform their works.

Edited March 21, 2023 by volcanohunter

[Quiggin]

Possokhov is also still working with San Francisco Ballet, for which he did a version of Stravinsky Violin Concerto this season. A curious arrangement, a kind of art-transcends-all approach to a situation that has had his colleagues making great personal sacrifices. He seems to be popular with dancers and comes off as very charming in video interviews and maybe that charm helps him defuse the gravity of his choices in his mind. But perhaps I'm missing something here and don't have the whole picture.

And thanks, volcanohunter, for your cite of Pollina Ivanova's FT piece, which may still be directly accessible here –

https://www.ft.com/content/4228c0df-4928-4639-a8b0-a22387f48ab2?shareType=nongift

https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva

Edited March 20, 2023 by Quiggin

[volcanohunter]

Since it's probably important for the record, this was Ratmansky’s Facebook post after the Bolshoi first performed his production of Flames of Paris without crediting him. After that run in November, the ballet was performed in February and will be again in April.

"Yesterday Большой театр России / Bolshoi Theatre of Russia performed my production of Flames of Paris again, two shows, morning and evening. I staged it in 2008 when I was still Bolshoi's director and it stayed in the repertory ever since. This time however it was different: my name as a choreographer was erased. No mention of a choreographer in the program (my assistant is still listed though), and the Bolshoi official website says it is 'scenic version of the Bolshoi Theater' (!) that they perform. The same happened to all my other productions in Moscow - Giselle, Romeo &Juliet, Le Corsaire. And at the Mariinsky Theatre all six of my ballets are now authorless according to their official website: Cinderella, Anna Karenina, Little Humpbacked Horse, Concerto DSCH, Seven Sonatas, Pierrot Lunaire have no choreographer.
This is so absurd and cinical that I don't even know how to react.
Isn't it called stealing? Why not remove my ballets as I asked when the war started? If the artists who are against the invasion of Ukraine must be now cancelled in Russia - be honest, don't perform works of a 'traitors'. What a disgrace.
And thinking about yesterday's performances which I am sure were as exciting as ever. Did the dancers notice what happened? Not a word from anyone. I wonder what do they feel when at the end of the ballet they march towards the audience fully armed stepping over the broken hero, Jerome? Does it feel relevant to them? Do they sense irony I intended when portraying court dancers who in Act II perform for the revolutionaries with the same zeal they performed for the King in Act I? 
I mean it is all so vegetarian compare to the hell Russian army brought to Ukraine. But these are my ballets and these are the companies I served for so many years..."

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid03YmkwNNzSkTFmwZsjNe7Y9bWoPFfdynTEwG5iuWyYyefGXAnewVCjLM8QEPKTW34l

Following the premiere of the Candeloro (after Ratmansky) after Petipa production ofThe Pharaoh’s Daughter at the Mariinsky this week, the company will present a bill of Seven Sonatas, Pierrot Lunaire and Concerto DSCH with no choreographer listed.

https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill/2023/3/31/1_1900/

[Mashinka]

Vaziev rolled up om a UK news programme a couple of weeks ago bleating about how his company can't tour anymore.  he seemed to believe the west has cancelled Tchaikovsky.  Utter rot of course.  What western company would ditch their two favourite cash cows?

[volcanohunter]

Vaziev knows perfectly well that Tchaikovsky is not on a "cancel" list. But I'm with Judith Flanders on this one (somewhere up there ☝☝☝). The Bolshoi and Mariinsky have disqualified themselves from touring countries that respect the rule of law. And tours to Iran are a nonstarter. Tours to North Korea would look really bad, worse than not touring at all.

Edited March 21, 2023 by volcanohunter

[Mashinka]

Just tours to China then.