DATELINE NEW YORK: Promoting Ukraine via performing arts (09/19/99)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Promoting Ukraine via performing arts

by Helen Smindak

"Look what Riverdance did for the Irish with their dynamic tours in the U.S. and Canada. Ukrainian performing groups can win publicity for Ukraine and Ukrainians in the same way!"

Leonid Oleksiuk, a Ukrainian-born Canadian citizen who has been marketing Ukrainian cultural events for 26 years, makes this statement firmly and unequivocably. What's more, he's also putting his money where his mouth is, as the saying goes. Since the beginning of the year he has devoted all his time, energy and organizing talents into mapping a five-year plan that will expand the touring schedules of Ukraine's major performing ensembles in the United States and Canada.

Next month, Mr. Oleksiuk's firm, Encore Productions, is brining to these shores the 50-member Volyn Ukrainian Song and Dance Company, a company he describes as "a very happy ensemble, sporting distinctive costumes, with musical and dance selections that are totally different." The cross-continent tour will be launched in Canada in the Toronto area, with concerts on October 3, 4 and 5 in the Living Arts Center theater in Mississauga, Ontario.

Virtuoso violinist Vasyl Popadiuk, a Ukrainian expatriate now living in Toronto who has just released his first CD, will be a star attraction of the program.

Among performances scheduled for the U.S. leg of the tour is an appearance at Town Hall in Manhattan on November 18.

The Volyn ensemble will be followed in March 2000 by Kyiv's Boyan Male Chamber Chorus, considered one of the finest male choruses in the world, with a repertoire that embraces Ukrainian, Old Slavonic and Western European sacred and classical music. In October 2000 the Kalyna Ukrainian Dance Company, also from Kyiv, is slated to begin a North American tour under Mr. Oleksiuk's supervision.

Other groups are waiting in the wings, says Mr. Oleksiuk, including the Sonechko children's dance ensemble from Zhytomyr, due here next summer, and the Ukrainian Navy Song and Dance Company, scheduled for the winter of 2001.

Encore's representative in Kyiv, Pavlo Lebedev, is on the lookout for additional Ukrainian talent. In an effort to raise the artistic level of each ensemble, Mr. Oleksiuk has arranged to supplement each company "with the best talent available in Ukraine."

"As we go along, we'll generate a phenomenal amount of media attention and befriend people like Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times, Clive Barnes and other writers cross-country," Mr. Oleksiuk predicts. "My company is discovering a good many Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainian Canadians working in the media, like Dick Russ in Cleveland (whose wife is Ukrainian) - there's quite a lot of these people who can be activated. Over a five-year term, we could create quite a media profile, which will be helpful to Ukraine and to the diaspora."

As the first step in accomplishing this goal, Mr. Oleksiuk moved Encore Productions from Cleveland to Toronto early this year. He deems Toronto to be admirably suited for the promotion of Ukrainian cultural groups: the city is Canada's media and financial capital, it has a wealth of talent related to his business, and it is the home of "probably the largest, most active and creative Ukrainian community in North America.

"I feel I've been working professionally all my life, but starting this year I'm taking this to a truly professional level, whereby, in a modest way, I can compete against Columbia, ICM Artists and any artists' management firms" Mr. Oleksiuk says.

His quest for greater professionalism brought him to New York recently to attend the Art Presenters of America annual conference. Speaking to "Dateline" at that time, Mr. Oleksiuk reported he had made many useful contacts and had observed that the Tamburitzans of Duquesne University and a Russian ensemble from San Francisco were the only ethnic groups represented. He has decided that the Ukrainian community will be represented at next year's conference by Encore Productions.

He emphasized that "presenter" is the title he likes to use in his work. "In the Ukrainian community, I've been called an impressario, but I feel that's too pretentious."

Born in the town of Oster near Kyiv, Mr. Oleksiuk came to Canada as a youngster with his family in 1950, and moved to Cleveland in 1981. While managing a small paint factory there, he was asked by Walter Wasik of Wasik Films in Oshawa, Ontario, to undertake the distribution of two Ukrainian films made in North America - "Nikoly Ne Zabudu" (I Shall Never Forget) and "Zhorstoki Svitanky" (Cruel Dawns). Accepting the challenge, he quit his job in 1973 and went to New York, where he negotiated for film showings with the Academy of Music (which used to stand at 14th Street and Third Avenue) and a theater in Irvington, N.J.

"I did some advertising, some promotion and, when the time came on a Sunday in December, we ran the films every three hours. It was a terrific success! People were lined up five across all along 14th Street and around the corner of Third Avenue," he recalls.

That was the start of his career in marketing and promotion. He took the Canadian films to Ukrainian centers in England, Europe and Australia, and continued to work in film distribution for some years. He made periodic trips to Ukraine in attempts to obtain Ukrainian-made films, but without much success, since Ukraine's film companies were centrally-controlled by Moscow during the Soviet era.

In 1992, just before Ukraine declared its independence, he managed to sign up a performing troupe, the Cherkaski Kozaky, to tour in the U.S. and Canada. He has been producing a Ukrainian tour every year since then, including the Black Sea Ukrainian Dance Company, the Hopak Dance Company and, finally, the famed Virsky Ukrainian Dance Company.

Though he readily admits that his career has had its ups and downs and he has made mistakes (and a few enemies) along the way, Mr. Oleksiuk believes he is now showing new zeal and new wisdom in his work, the result of the great experience and wealth of contacts gained while coordinating the Virsky ensemble's highly successful tour of North America.

Mr. Oleksiuk holds that Encore's prime mission is to win millions of new friends for Ukraine. He believes that awareness is the name of the game; it's brand identification that will popularize Ukrainian culture and, thereby, Ukraine, boosting tourist travel as well as business.

He notes with pride: "We have already started on this path with the Virsky tour, which received front-page write-ups and rave notices in some 38 major newspapers last year. The Virsky ensemble was cited by The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff as one of the 10 notable dance entities of 1998. The company performed on such national network shows as "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" and the "Conan O'Brien Show," seen not only in the U.S. and Canada but even worldwide, including the Superchannel in Ukraine."

On another front, Mr. Oleksiuk is assisting George Holowka of Winnipeg in establishing a Ukrainian Pavilion at Australia's Olympic Games 2000, quite possibly at the Riverside Theater complex in Parramatta, just four miles from the main Olympic stadium. With the Virsky company due to tour Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan next fall, Mr. Oleksiuk plans to steer the ensemble to Australia to perform at Parramatta from September 15 until the end of the Games - "a wonderful opportunity for masses of visitors to get acquainted with Ukraine."

If that were not enough to keep him busy, he is also working with a Ukrainian businessman from Dnipropetrovsk, Volodymyr Nazarov, to co-produce an original Broadway-type show, tentatively titled "Genesis - The Rebirth," with violinist Mr. Popadiuk as an integral part.

With many irons in the fire, this presenter is bound to forge success for his ideas.

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