A week after the start of the conflict, the future of Ukrainian dancers and companies is more than uncertain.
Without delay, the world of theaters showed great solidarity with the artists of Kiev.
Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, and Xavier Couture, president of the Théâtre du Châtelet, announced on Thursday that they will welcome the Kiyv City Ballet in residence, for as long as it wishes.
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées announced that it was programming the Kiev National Opera Ballet with
The Nutcracker
for Christmas 2022. Earlier this week, the Grand Ballet de Kiev, which was completing a two-month tour in France, was everywhere in the media.
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Virsky's dancers or those of the Kiev National Opera are less fortunate than their colleagues from these formations to which the Châtelet, temple of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, or the Paris Opera, haven of unheard-of stars, open their doors.
The two national companies were in Kiev at the time of the Russian invasion and have suffered ever since.
“Theaters are closed, men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country.
Many have enlisted and are trying to stay alive, ”
says Valery Colin, producer of Virsky and producer with Janine Roze of the Kiev National Opera ballet, in 2019. Young dancers Oleksiy Potyomkin and Lesya Vorotnyk appear in photos on Twitter a rifle in hand, brave of the brave with slender bodies, thrown into an inhuman fray.
So what can we do to help them?
Open up a horizon for them.
“The contract for the coming of the
Nutcracker
from the Kiev Opera to the Théâtre des Champs Élysées was signed well before February 24.
This kind of tour is prepared months in advance
,
”
says Vony Sarfati, their producer.
"
I wanted us to communicate yesterday about the coming of the Kiev National Opera ballet to the TCE as it seems important to me to let them know in these times of pain that we are waiting for them and will give them all our support, including financial
says Michel Franck, director of the TCE
.
Just like Oleksiy Potyomkin, Lesya Vorotnyk, dancer at the Kyiv National Opera, took up arms to defend her country.
Twitter screenshot @avalaina
Kiyv City Ballet, Kiev Opera Ballet, Grand Ballet de Kiev... So are there as many ballets in the Ukrainian capital as there are cathedrals?
The city actually has two companies of excellence, funded by the state.
The first is that of the Kiev National Opera Ballet.
A hundred dancers and their orchestra, soloists who can rival those of the great companies of the world, a company which is the pride of the country.
It was welcomed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with a beautiful
Swan Lake
at Christmas 2019. The second is the National Ensemble of Ukraine Virsky, a popular dance company, where 120 dancers dressed in regional costumes and the dancers in flowered headdresses interpret the sequences of traditional dances of the country.
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The others, Grand Ballet de Kiev, Kiyv City ballet - and we could vary the names endlessly - are companies of circumstance, that producers like France Concert (Kiyv City ballet) or NP Spectacles Productions (Grand Ballet de Kiev) tour in Europe or the United States in the great classics of the repertoire interpreted without brilliance.
The Grand Ballet de Kiev, which has just left France, presented a
Swan Lake
with about twenty dancers.
There are about sixty in the one presented by the Kiev National Opera Ballet.
The Kiyv City ballet performs a
Nutcracker
for children
(The Nutcracker and the Enchanted Worlds)
at the Casino de Paris, in Nantes, then in Tours.
For a long time, producers have played on the part of the dream that the name of a large Slavic city associated with that of a hit by Marius Petipa provokes in the public.
Many spectators in the region can only see this repertoire performed by these companies.
The others where excellence is the rule do not occur there.
And won't happen there for a long time;
in the Ukraine, companies and troops no longer make one think of dance.
