DATELINE NEW YORK: Ballet and TV pluses (06/23/96)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Ballet and TV pluses

by Helen Smindak

With the opera season over, ballet has come to the fore, both at the Metropolitan Opera House and the New York State Theater.

Two Ukrainian-born dancers - Vladimir Malakhov and Maxim Belotserkovsky - have been winning rave reviews from critics for their performances in the 1996 season of the American Ballet Theatre, now in its closing weeks at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Across the Lincoln Center Plaza at the New York State Theater, American-born ballerina Roma Sosenko continues her fine work in solo and demi-solo performances with the New York City Ballet Company.

Mr. Malakhov, who has been compared by Newsday to the famous dancer Rudolf Nureyev, has been appearing this spring in leading roles in exciting productions of "Romeo and Juliet," "Manon," "La Bayadere" and "Swan Lake." He also dances in various works that make up a special All-Tchaikovsky program (Ballet Imperial, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and The Sleeping Beauty, Act III).

Considered "our new find" by the American Ballet Theater, Mr. Malakhov was born in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, where he began his dance training at age 4 at a local ballet school. After completing studies at the Bolshoi Ballet School, he joined the Moscow Classical Ballet in 1986 as the company's youngest principal dancer and was assigned leading roles in a large number of ballets.

In 1992, Mr. Malakhov joined the Vienna State Opera Ballet as a principal soloist, dancing the leading roles in "La Fille Mal Gardee," "The Nutcracker," "Don Quixote," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Manon." He has been appearing as a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada since 1994.

Winner of many international awards, he was named "best male dancer in the world" by Japan's Dance Magazine for three consecutive years, 1992-1994. He is the subject of two films - "Bravo Malakhov" (1991) and "The Dancer Malakhov" (1993).

Before joining the American Ballet Theater in the spring of 1995, he appeared in the United States with the Moscow Classical Ballet tour and as a guest artist with the Bolshoi Ballet Academy tour and the Los Angeles Classical Ballet.

His repertoire with the ABT last season included Solor in "La Bayadere," Albrecht in "Giselle," the leading male role in "Les Sylphides" and the "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux."

Mr. Belotserkovsky, a native of Kyiv who trained at the School of Dance there, became a leading dance soloist with the National Opera of Bulgaria in 1990. The following year, he became a leading soloist with the National Opera of Ukraine, and appeared with the company during an international tour that included Japan, India, Egypt, Mexico, Canada and several European and East European nations.

While with the company, he was awarded the title of "etoile" (star), and in 1993 was honored by the president of Ukraine for outstanding artistic achievement.

Joining the American Ballet Theater as a member of the corps de ballet in 1994, he was appointed soloist in May 1995. His roles have included Espada in "Don Quixote" and the peasant pas de deux in "Giselle;" he also created a leading role in "States of Grace."

This season, Mr. Belotserkovsky partnered Julie Kent in the ABT's full-length production of the world's favorite fairy tale, "Cinderella." As the Prince, he recreated excellently a role he has danced many times with the National Opera of Ukraine.

Ms. Sosenko, who began her ballet training with Roma Pryma Bohachevsky in New York at age 6 later studied at the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet. She joined the company as a corps de ballet member in 1978 and rose to the rank of soloist in 1989.

During the current NYC Ballet season, she is appearing in "Coppelia" ("Dawn" variation), the Pas de Cinq movement of "Chaconne," and "Walpurgis Nacht." In July, she will appear with the NYC Ballet in a three-week engagement at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Previously, Ms. Sosenko has danced featured roles in works choreographed by Jerome Robbins ("The Four Seasons" and "The Goldberg Variation"), George Balanchine ("Ballo Della Regina," "Le Baiser de le Fee" divertimento, the pas de trois "Emeralds" from "Jewels" and "Scotch Symphony") and Peter Martins ("Eight Miniatures," "Little Suite" and "Suite from Historie de Soldat."

The daughter of Oksana and George Sosenko of Yonkers, N.Y., Ms. Sosenko has been seen on New York's PBS television channel in several productions, including Balanchine's "L'Enfant et les Sortileges," "A Lincoln Center Special: A Tribute to George Balanchine," and Jerome Robbins' "Live from Studio H." She also appeared in Ruth page's "The Merry Widow." She has made guest appearances in Italy, St. Maarten and Los Angeles, and traveled with the New York City Ballet to Japan during a recent tour.

A Butovych retrospective

On the 100th anniversary of his birth in Ukraine in 1896, the graphic artist and painter Nicholas Butovych is being vividly remembered with a retrospective of his work at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 206 W. 100th St. in Manhattan. The exhibit will run through June 23.

Mr. Butovych came to the United States in 1947, and lived and worked in Ridgefield Park, N.J., until his death in 1961.

Some 30 paintings (oil, gouache and watercolor), etchings and woodcut prints from the Butovych family's collection, depicting folk scenes, landscapes and portraits, are being shown, along with an equal number of Butovych bookplates, greeting cards and book and magazine covers that came from the academy's archives. Several oil paintings from the private collection of a Prague couple, Marian and Julia Zadayanna, are also on display.

Mr. Butovych's work is remarkable for its glowing colors and a combination of fantasy and realism, elements that are especially noticeable in stunning compositions prepared as illustrations for stage sets of Ivan Kotkiarevsky's "Eneida" and Michael Haivoronsky's ballet "Did Lado."

Handwritten correspondence about the ballet that passed between Mr. Butovych in Ridgefield and Mr. Haivoronsky in Forest Hills, Queens, in the late 1940s is displayed under glass, together with the artist's handwritten autobiography.

At the exhibit opening on June 9, art critic Stephanie Hulyk Hnatenko pointed to the influence of early childhood impressions on the artist's work. Although Mr. Butovych could not be classified as an abstract expressionist, his work unites Western European art and Ukrainian art traditions, and expresses the mysticism of Ukrainian life.

In his memories, Mr. Butovych wrote of the folk tales and legends he had heard as a young child. In his subconscious mind, he saw reflections from those tales in every bush, sheaf of grain, willow tree or eerily lighted, storm-tossed cloud, and transposed those impressions into his compositions.

Mr. Butovych studied art in Prague and Berlin and at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig. He worked and exhibited in various European cities, including Paris (Autumn Salon of 1928) and received several awards.

Life in the Carpathians

"Carpati: 50 Miles, 50 years," a documentary film which had a one-week engagement in May at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, is a portrait of the rural Carpathian area of southwestern Ukraine, seen through the eyes of Zev Godinger, a Holocaust survivor in his late 60s who lives in the small town of Berehovo.

With actor Leonard Nimoy as narrator, the movie follows Mr. Godinger on a symbolic and emotional pilgrimage from Berehovo to Vinohradov, his hometown 50 miles to the east. A secondary theme celebrates the mingling of Gypsy and Jewish musical cultures in the region, with cameo appearances by Ukrainian musicians.

Written and directed by Yale Storm, the film points up the intermingling of many nationalities in the area (it was home to about a quarter of a million Jews before World War II) as well as the changing of national flags several times in this century.

A story told by Mr. Nimoy at the beginning of the film humorously illustrates the changing of occupying forces in the Carpathian Mountain region. A Jew from the Carpathian Mountains, asked by a gypsy how it is that he knows so many languages, replies," I had my bris in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, my bar mitzvah in Czecho-Slovakia, my divorce in the Soviet Union, and I'll be buried in the [sic] Ukraine, but I've never left my hometown."

Mr. Godinger tells of returning to Ukraine from Auschwitz and surviving on the streets of Vinohradov until he was able to start an ice-cream vending business, which earned him the equivalent of 29 cents a day. When the Communists occupied Ukraine, they persecuted so-called "Jewish speculators" who remained in the Carpathian area. Today, only about 1,200 remain.

Television tidbits

In the past few months, references to Ukraine and Ukrainians - complimentary references, at that - have been picked up on prime-time television shows.

These references were all separate and apart from news reports on important political and economic developments in Ukraine, or the recognition given to Ukraine with every appearance of sports champions like Oksana Baiul, Viktor Petrenko and runner Lyubov Kocko.

NBC and ABC run neck-and-neck for the greatest number of allusions, with WPIX (a local New York station) and New York's PBS channel coming in with one apiece.

The NBC comedy series "3rd Rock From the Sun," which airs on Tuesday evenings, recently had star John Lithgow commenting about "an ancient Ukrainian quilting symbol," to which a co-star responds," I'm going to have to find someone who can translate Ukrainian."

In a recent episode of another NBC comedy, "The John LaRoquette Show," Mr. LaRoquette was seen at a bookwriter's party speaking to the writer's beautiful wife, who could pass for a model. She tells Mr. LaRoquette, "I'm from Ukraine."

On a serious note, Yosyf Terelia was credited with orchestrating the Ukrainian civil rights movement on an NBC program titled "New Visions of the Future: Prophecy III." Mr. Terelia, who survived 23 years in a Soviet prison camp (nine of those in solitary confinement), also worked with oppressed and persecuted Jews, noted the program.

ABC's "World's Funniest Videos" included a segment showing a group of Ukrainian men and women in a tractor-hauling contest as the narrator proclaimed: "And in Ukraine, it was man versus machine."

Scott Clark of ABC's Eyewitness News gave a humorous narration in rhyme during a segment that showed Ukrainian women gymnasts doing floor exercises in unison.

According to an ABC News report a few months ago, superstar Whoopi Goldberg auctioned off her leather jacket at a Sotheby's auction "to assist Ukrainian children suffering from defects due to the Chernobyl fallout." Sponsored by the Jewish organization Children Of Chernobyl, the auction was held to benefit Jewish children living in Ukraine, but Ukrainian children in general got the benefit of the publicity.

A recent rerun of the Jerry Seinfeld Show on WPIX, which had to do with Superbowl fever, showed Newman and Kramer playing the board game Risk on the subway. Newman: "I can take the [sic] Ukraine." Kramer: "But the [sic] Ukraine is weak." Tough-looking male bystander with gruff East European accent: "I am Ukrainian. You call Ukraine weak." Wham, the board is split in two.

In the Saturday Night Movie on PBS, "House Calls," Walter Matthau tells Glenda Jackson, "I'm a middle-aged Ukrainian." Retorts Ms. Jackson: "You're a tall, handsome, middle-aged Ukrainian!"

A new Austrian Airlines commercial which touts "daily flights to Moscow, Prague and Kyiv" on various channels places the Ukrainian capital on an equal footing with other international capitals.

One could argue that these items are insignificant and can't compete with the damage caused by that "ugly" segment on CBS's "60 Minutes," but it certainly feels good to be noticed.

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