1994: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: The cultural scene: a diverse season (12/25/94)

1994: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The cultural scene: a diverse season

The year witnessed yet another notable and diverse cultural season, enriched by the visits of prominent artists and performers from Ukraine. Ukrainian musicians and Ukrainian music continued to be heard in recitals and leading concert halls, with new accomplished performers appearing on the scene. But perhaps most noteworthy this year was the screening and staging of Ukrainian film and theater.

Among the highlights were the following:

Film

Montreal filmmaker Yurij Luhovy's feature documentaries were both the object of acclaim and controversy. Mr. Luhovy (who garnered awards for his 1983 film on the Stalin-led Ukrainian famine, "Harvest of Despair" ), was named best editor at the Atlantic Film Festival for his internationally acclaimed 1992 film on the Mohawk uprising at Oka, Quebec, "Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance." His latest National Film Board documentary "Freedom had a Price," which deals with Canada's internment operation (1914-1920) of Ukrainian immigrants as "enemy aliens" during World War I, received an honorable mention at the 42nd Columbus International Film and Video Festival in Ohio in October. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp., despite manifest public support of televising the documentary, had initially refused to show the film. After months of stalling and excuses the CBC will finally air the program on both its main network and on its 24-hour Newsworld cable channel, with broadcast dates yet to be confirmed.
While in New York early in the year in connection with the screening of his critically acclaimed film "Famine 33" at the Film Forum theater, Kyyiv-based film director Oles Yanchuk announced that his next project, titled "Atentat," will focus on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and post-war emigration of Ukrainians to Western Europe.
"An American Portrait of Ukraine," an exhibit by the award-winning photojournalist Wilton S. Tifft, a man who hopes to change the West's perception of Ukraine through his photographs, was held in Kyyiv in October under the auspices of the United States Embassy after having traveled throughout Ukraine for more than a year, with shows in Vinnytsia, Chernivtsi, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr and Kharkiv. The exhibit, comprising some 200 prints out of the 42,000 photos taken over a three-year period since Ukraine's independence in 1991, was conceived by Mr. Tifft as part of his intent "... to give an insight into a country and its people, a culture with a rich heritage that has been scattered and distorted among the pages of revisionist history but now is being collected once again to be placed in its rightful perspective."
The documentary film "I Bude Novyi Den," (And a New Day Will Come), produced by Bohdan Diatsenko at the Kyyivnaukfilm Studio of the National Cinemateque of Ukraine, premiered before a Filmmakers' and Critics Union audience in Kyyiv in April. The film provides a comprehensive and balanced survey of Ukrainian-Jewish relations through history.
The film "Night of Questions," by Kyyiv film director and screenplay writer Tetyana Mahar, with an international cast featuring Ivar Kalnynsk, Vira Hlaholyeva and Luba Demchuk, premiered at Washington's Kennedy Center in May and was screened in various Ukrainian communities.
"Journey into Dusk" a film/video montage written and directed by Yuri Myskiw, with photography by Oleh Fedak, which depicts the last days of a fictional, modern poet, premiered in Chicago on October 29 at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art. The film, which incorporates the poetry of the New York Group, starred Andre Maria Liatyshevsky and Zoriana Hrabova, with a special appearance by Lidia Krushelnytsky.
"Dora was Dysfunctional," a short comedy film by Ukrainian American director Andrea Odezynska, starring Joan Giammarco and John Glover, was screened at New York University Tisch School of the Arts on December 17.

Theater

This year witnessed the creation of The Cultural Fund of The Washington Group, under the direction of Laryssa Lapychak Chopivsky, with the aim of bringing Ukrainian arts and literature into the cultural mainstream. Its inaugural event, featuring the Les Kurbas Young Theater of Lviv in the performance of the poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych, was held June 5, under the patronage of the Embassy of Ukraine.
The Les Kurbas Young Theater, under the direction of its founder Volodymyr Kuchinsky, was in New York for the American debut of "Yara's Forest Song," directed by Virlana Tkacz and in collaboration with the Kurbas Young Theater. The play, based on Lesia Ukrainka's "Lisova Pisnia," was staged at La MaMa E.T.C., June 10-26. The group went on to stage excerpts from its repertoire, Hryhoriy Skovoroda's "The Grateful Erody" and Volodymyr Vynnychenko's "Between Two Powers," in performances for the Ukrainian community in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Hunter, N.Y., and Cambridge, Mass. Theater members are Oleh Drach, Tetiana Kaspruk, Mr. Kuchinsky, Natalka Polovynka and Andrei Vodichev.
The outstanding performance of the season was the appearance of Bohdan Stupka, leading stage and film actor of Ukraine, along with his son, Ostap Stupka, in The Ivan Franko State Drama Theater of Kyyiv production of "Notes of a Madman." An adaptation of Gogol's "The Diary of a Madman," under the direction of Wasyl Sechin and Yulian Panich, the work was first presented abroad at the Edinburgh International Theater Festival, August 14-September 3. The play opened in New York at La MaMa E.T.C. on November 25 and went on tour of major Ukrainian communities through December 18.
The Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater of Odessa under the direction of its artistic director, Ihor Ravitsky, staged the North American premiere of "Marilyn Mudrow," at the Prairie Theatre Exchange of Winnipeg, November 3-December 5. The contemporary play, with screenplay by Nikolai Koljada, offers a glimpse of the ugly reality of life in the Soviet Union just before its disintegration.
Kyyiv artists Svitlana Vatamaniuk of the Molodizhnyi Teater, soprano Nadia Petrenko-Matviychuk, and pianist Svitlana Hlukh presented "The Poetry of Lesia Ukrainka in Song and Recitation." The performance, a dramatization of the love life of the poetess, was held at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York on November 5 and was staged in various venues of the Ukrainian community in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

Music

Canadian jazz pianist John Stetch, who has become increasingly involved in the New York jazz scene, completed a cross-Canada tour with his quartet launching his second CD, "Carpathian Blues." Released in February, the disc has received very favorable reviews in the leading Canadian press.
Among the handful of prominent women in choral and symphonic conducting, Marika Kuzma, director, since 1990, of the University Chorus at the University of California at Berkeley, has consistently captured the attention of music critics and the respect of composers on the West Coast. Under Dr. Kuzma's direction, the UC has enjoyed stellar reviews from Bay Area music critics for its eclectic and challenging repertoire.
A jubilee concert honoring Mykola Kolessa, the distinguished and influential Ukrainian composer, conductor and pedagogue, was held at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in New York on October 9. With the maestro present, a select group of performers, including pianist Maria Krushelnytska, soprano Oksana Krovytska, violinist Bohdan Kaskiv, cellist Kharytyna Kolessa and violist Halyna Kolessa, offered highlights from Mr. Kolessa's body of chamber music. The jubilee celebrations of the maestro's 90th birthday, which commenced in his native Lviv in December 1993, continued with subsequent concerts in Philadelphia at the Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Center on October 11 and in Toronto at the Glenn Gould Studio on October 16.
Three singers from Ukraine appeared in principal roles in the New York City Opera production of Borodin's "Prince Igor," which opened on September 10, and were heard in other NYCO ventures through the season. Soprano Oksana Krovytska of Lviv appeared in the role of Yaroslavna, tenor Vladimir Grishko of Kyyiv sang the role of Vladimir Igorevich, and bass Sergey Zadvorny of Dnipropetrovske, made his debut as Khan Konchak. The three artists were featured prominently in a September 17 photo and story in The New York Times.
At the Met, bass Sergei Koptchak, a native of the ethnically Ukrainian Priashiv region of Slovakia, appeared in Verdi's "Rigolletto," Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."
In cooperation with the Music and Art Center of Greene County, N.Y., a quartet of accomplished musicians from Lviv and Kyyiv, composer/pianist Myroslav Skoryk, pianist Anna Klymashivska, soprano Maria Hirska and baritone Oleh Chmyr, presented a progam of Ukrainian lieder and operatic arias in concert appearances in major Ukrainian communities throughout the northeast, premiering at the Grazhda in Hunter, N.Y and including the program "New Faces, New Voices from Lviv," at the Sumner Museum in Washington on September 26.
Pianist Mykola Suk appeared in concert at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on October 23 in a program of works by Beethoven, Bartok, Liszt and Sylvestrov. The concert was sponsored by Shupp Artists Management Inc. in association with the Ukrainian Institute of America.
Cellist Vagram Saradjian and pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky, winners of the 1994 International Artists Award, made their Carnegie Hall debut in a concert on November 13.
The chamber music of Virko Baley, music director of the Nevada Symphony and longstanding promoter of contemporary Ukrainian music in the West, was presented by the Ukrainian Institute of America's Music at the Institute concert series, at New York's Weill Recital Hall on November 21. The six works, which were performed by an impressive roster of accomplished artists, represented a span of more than two decades of compositional activity.

Dance

Irina Dvorovenko, a principal dancer of the Kyyiv Ballet, and Maxim Belozerkovsky, a principal dancer with the National Opera and Ballet Theater of Ukraine, appeared in New York in a concert billed as "Ballet Stars of Moscow." Ms. Dvorenko, who is in her early 20s, is a gold medal recipient of the 1994 Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition. Mr. Belozerkovsky has been signed by American Ballet Theater.
Ukraine's national dance, the Hopak, with choreography by Roma Pryma Bohachevsky of New York, was featured in this season's cross-country tour of the acclaimed Duquesne University Tamburitzans with a performance at the Fashion Institute of Technology's Haft Auditorium on October 29.

Art

This year witnessed the appearance of "Terra Incognita," a trilingual publication devoted to contemporary art in Ukraine edited by artist Hlib Vysheslavsky. The premiere issue, published in Kyyiv, came out in spring.
The Soros Center for Contemporary Art, which opened in Kyyiv in May, inaugurated its activities with an art show on the subject of peace titled "Alchemic Surrender," held in July abroad the Ukrainian warship, Slavutych. The show, curated by SCCA's director, Marta Kuzma, addressed the conflict in language and politics between the Russian and Ukrainian fleets in the Black Sea port of Sevastopil. The exhibit and the artists received international attention. The SCCA also sponsored, in October, the showings of works by Ukrainian artists at the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil and at the international "Project for Europe" exhibition in Copenhagen.
"New Ukrainian Painting," an exhibition organized by The Economist and the 369 Gallery, featured the work of Kyyiv artists Valeria Trubina and the late Oleh Holosii, significant figures on the contemporary Ukrainian art scene who, over the past three years, have attracted growing attention in Europe and in the U.S. The exhibit opened in London on February 8 and was on view through March 12.

Literature

Askold Melnyczuk's first novel, "What is Told," a publication of Faber & Faber, has been hailed as an inventive, assured work. At once scathingly comic and tragic, the novel is embued with a deep sense of the importance of history as it follows three generations of a fictional Ukrainian family from the outbreak of World War I to the U.S. of the 1950s and '60s.The work has garnered extensive critical attention as well as excellent reviews in The New York Times Book Review and The Boston Globe.

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