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

[California]

21 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

The rights belong to his second wife and widow, Lise Lander, who assists Johnny Eliasen in staging the ballet.

https://www.opera.hu/en/company/szemely/lise-lander/458/

https://www.sfballet.org/johnny-eliasen-repetiteur-and-lise-lander-artistic-advisor-on-etudes/ 

Very interesting! Thanks! I'm guessing, but with her Danish heritage I have to think that giving new permission to Russian companies is off the table for the time being.

[volcanohunter]

Well, in the case of Kim, this is a matter of making your bed and lying in it. He has stayed in Russia, knowing that the repertoire is going to shrink, that The Pharaoh's Daughter is legally and morally dubious, and that the tours he was used to doing are gone. The annual visits to Baden-Baden and DC, and the triennial visits to London may not return during his career. 

(P.S. I have seen Kim in the flesh and don't understand the grounds for his reputation. )

[California]

17 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

Well, in the case of Kim, this is a matter of making your bed and lying in it. He has stayed in Russia, knowing that the repertoire is going to shrink, that The Pharaoh's Daughter is legally and morally dubious, and that the tours he was used to doing are gone. The annual visits to Baden-Baden and DC, and the triennial visits to London may not return during his career. 

(P.S. I have seen Kim in the flesh and don't understand the grounds for his reputation. )

I have only seen Kim once in the theater -- partnering Tereshkina in Bayadere at the Kennedy Center in 2017. I saw two other casts and they just blew the others away. Stunning.

I agree with you on the choices he has made. We don't know if he has family in Russia who might be penalized if he defected. (I don't actually know). (I rationalize that explanation for others who have stayed.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_danc/the-ballerina-who-fights-back-in-la-bayadere-she-wont-be-manhandled/2017/10/18/fc0ee978-b41d-11e7-99c6-46bdf7f6f8ba_story.html

[Mashinka]

3 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

The rights belong to his second wife and widow, Lise Lander

I believe Lise was his fifth wife.

[Helene]

According to his Wikipedia article, which cites this entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Lander's first two wives were Margot Lander and Toni Lander, and his widow was Lise Lander.

However, according to IMDB, he was married five times:

Lise Lander Møldrup(August 28, 1965 - September 14, 1971) (his death)

Toni Lander(April 5, 1950 - 1964) (divorced)

Lili Laybourn(November 7, 1945 - ?)

Margot Lander(May 28, 1932 - 1942) (divorced)

Esther Maja Guldager(1927 - 1931) (divorced)

 

[volcanohunter]

Holy moly!  Well, Lise Lander was the last one, and she inherited his ballets.

[Drew]

8 hours ago, California said:

I have only seen Kim once in the theater -- partnering Tereshkina in Bayadere at the Kennedy Center in 2017. I saw two other casts and they just blew the others away. Stunning.

I agree with you on the choices he has made. We don't know if he has family in Russia who might be penalized if he defected. (I don't actually know). (I rationalize that explanation for others who have stayed.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_danc/the-ballerina-who-fights-back-in-la-bayadere-she-wont-be-manhandled/2017/10/18/fc0ee978-b41d-11e7-99c6-46bdf7f6f8ba_story.html

That Bayadere in D.C. was stunning.  I felt the same about Kim's Ali in Corsaire which I also saw live.  I've seen video of him in Legend of Love that I find pretty jaw dropping too....

It would have been hard for him to leave Russia I imagine since he has a Russian wife and has lived there a long time (over a decade), and he has spoken about his close, quasi-familial relation with his coaches. (Nagahisa's situation was very different.) But other non-Russian dancers in a similar situation--I'm thinking of Parish--did leave. The fine details of Kim's situation, as you say, we can't know. But a dancing career outside of Russia was waiting for him, indeed probably a bigger one than awaited Parish.  I can't get inside his head or heart and I'm sorry I won't see him dance again--at least it's unlikely--but, yes, his choices.

Edited April 9, 2023 by Drew

[Marta]

Drew said:  That Bayadere in D.C. was stunning.  I felt the same about Kim's Ali in Corsaire which I also saw live.  I've seen video of him in Legend of Love that I find pretty jaw dropping too....

I saw Kim in Bayadere in N.Y. and he was absolutely thrilling.  There is a lot of video of Kim on YouTube which I enjoy frequently.  Legend of Love, DQ, Talisman, and short clips of contemporary ballets.

[Petra]

Kim is scheduled to dance in Tel Aviv at the end of May. I won't be going and it looks like most of the program, besides Kim and Polina Semionova, will be quasi-professional performances of contemporary dance (Sharon Eyal, etc.)

[volcanohunter]

Interview with Mikhail Shishkin, novelist in self-imposed exile.

It's hard to excerpt just one quote.

"I’ve had very solid ground under my feet all my life. This was Russian culture, as a part of world culture. And all at once this was blown away,” he says. “Because if there is Russian culture, if there is Tolstoy, if there is Rachmaninov, and so on, then how was Bucha possible?"

"This means that all the books that I wrote, and that my colleagues wrote over the past 20, 30 years . . . we are just losers. What did we write them for, if this catastrophe is possible?" He pauses. "I feel an incredible sense of shame, even though I know I am not to blame for this war." He accepts, though, that the war would not be possible without the complicity of millions of Russians, including those heading to the battlefields to kill and be killed: "Putin is the symptom, not the illness."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-russia-ukraine-war-mikhail-shishkin-c5bnmfd7n 

[California]

31 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

Interview with Mikhail Shishkin, novelist in self-imposed exile.

It's hard to excerpt just one quote.

"I’ve had very solid ground under my feet all my life. This was Russian culture, as a part of world culture. And all at once this was blown away,” he says. “Because if there is Russian culture, if there is Tolstoy, if there is Rachmaninov, and so on, then how was Bucha possible?"

I recall hearing similar sentiments from Germans: How could a culture that produced Goethe, Bach, and Beethoven also produce Hitler?

I won't venture into analogous situations in the US, but you can fill in the blanks yourself...

[volcanohunter]

Not only that, we know that Nazis were passionate art "collectors."

My own view is that people grossly overestimate the salutary power of art. No amount of ballet is going to change anyone or anything. For this reason "cultural diplomacy" is at best a flimsy concept. At worst, the rose-colored glasses of foreign admirers become a form of willful blindness to brutal reality.

[volcanohunter]

Rostyslav Yanchyshen, a dancer at the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater, has been killed in battle. From Alexei Ratmansky. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrSZkqKOJh6/

Soprano Oksana Dyka posted that her brother was killed in action.

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

In his youth he had been a champion rower.

 

[Mashinka]

This article doesn't specifically relate to dance, but the balletic image made me feel physically sick

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65347833

[volcanohunter]

 

Do you envision a day when you’ll work again in Russia?

I’ve heard that when Nabokov was invited to Germany after World War II, he said, “I won’t go because I don’t want to accidentally shake hands with a murderer.” That resonated.

What is your sense of the Russian cultural scene now?

It’s getting worse and worse in Russia day by day. In cultural life, they try to pretend that everything is fine, but the repertory shrinks, the best creators leave. Some have chosen to stay. But if you work for a state-supported, important Russian cultural institution, it means that you support Putin and his war, and you’re a tool of propaganda.

Some Russian artists say they have no choice but to work for institutions like the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi. Even if they oppose the war, they say, they need the jobs.

If you live in Russia, I understand that. But if you come from the West, that’s unacceptable — as unacceptable as for the West to receive people who support Putin. And there are many great amazing artists who still find a way to tour and perform.

[California]

The United Ukrainian Ballet will perform their Giselle June 29 - July 2 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. 

https://www.broadwayworld.com/costa-mesa/article/United-Ukrainian-Ballet-Makes-West-Coast-Debut-At-Segerstrom-Center-20230503

[volcanohunter]

Alexei Ratmansky has drawn attention to a Telegram channel called The Bolshoi for the Front. Through it, employees of the Bolshoi Theater collect money to buy supplies for the Russian army invading Ukraine. This ranges from footwear and medications to binoculars, drones and even munitions. It's not a large channel; at the moment it has 187 subscribers. It is administered by Kirill Nosenko, a member of the Bolshoi orchestra, who rather cynically ends his posts with the words "For Peace!" Otherwise the channel's membership is fairly anonymous and people are identified by first name only: Vladimir, Anna, Svetlana, Anton... But one member who is loud and proud about her contributions is former principal dancer and current coach Nadezhda Gracheva. Ratmansky includes screenshots of the letters that accompany her parcels, some of which she signed People's Artist of Russia, Commander of the Order of Honor, Prima Ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater Nadezhda Gracheva. (I suppose it bears pointing out that she retired from the stage 12 years ago.)

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02fDb2yKzAfcbpR1iJJkxpKtKy1kDS1Fn8thGywkX1J9qE7yAB38gGkYwsKvvzfPC4l&id=1377723438&mibextid=Nif5oz

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtS7vksNkF5/

Edited June 16, 2023 by volcanohunter
additional link

[Mashinka]

You mention munitions.  Yesterday I was told that the company is being asked to donate (I doubt voluntarily) to a bomb to be inscribed 'from the Bolshoi'.  I found that hard to believe, after reading the above post I no longer doubt it.

[California]

3 hours ago, Mashinka said:

You mention munitions.  Yesterday I was told that the company is being asked to donate (I doubt voluntarily) to a bomb to be inscribed 'from the Bolshoi'.  I found that hard to believe, after reading the above post I no longer doubt it.

Ratmansky posted a picture of that bomb with the inscription in Russian on his Instagram account - sickening:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtS7vksNkF5/

[Marta]

3 hours ago, California said:

3 hours ago, California said:

Ratmansky posted a picture of that bomb with the inscription in Russian on his Instagram account - sickening:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtS7vksNkF5/

Yes, absolutely sickening and horrible.  I suppose we'll never know if some dancers/staff of the Bolshoi are donating voluntarily.

 

[volcanohunter]

3 hours ago, Marta said:

Yes, absolutely sickening and horrible.  I suppose we'll never know if some dancers/staff of the Bolshoi are donating voluntarily.

The membership of this group constitutes less than 10% of the theater's employees, so it's clearly not mandatory, but no doubt the social pressures to donate are high. Of course it's sobering to realize that the donations are coming not only from, say, bookkeepers, carpenters and wig makers, but also performing artists, the ones the audience showers with admiration and applause at the end of a show.

[volcanohunter]

The work of Larissa Saveliev and Howard Buffett to help relocate displaced Ukrainian ballet students has been mentioned upthread. ABC News talked to them and two of those students now training in the U.S 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukrainian-ballet-dancers-find-refuge-us-ballet-schools/story?id=100271284

[volcanohunter]

Some still insist that art exists apart from politics, but here is Vladimir Urin, on behalf of the employees of the Bolshoi Theater, pledging fealty to "the president."

 

For the majority of its videos the Bolshoi no longer provides English subtitles, and this was no exception. 

[Mashinka]

Out of interest have similar statements come out of the Maryinsky?

[volcanohunter]

I didn't find anything analogous on the Mariinsky's YouTube, Telegram or Instagram, where, unlike the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky continues to post despite the site being banned in Russia.