DATELINE NEW YORK: Heralding a glorious cultural season

by Helen Smindak

A Carpathian trembita echoed across Lincoln Plaza last month, the first time this musical instrument of the Hutsul highlanders has been heard in the vicinity of New York's major opera and concert halls. In the hands of virtuoso woodwinds artist Andriy Milavsky, who heads the Cheres Folk Ensemble, the trembita was a tangible and highly audible part of the annual concert of folk music presented in Damrosch Park by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. In an impalpable sense, it was also the herald of many glorious events that promise to make this 2000-2001 season a most resplendent one for Ukrainian culture in New York.

The season's first half alone is studded with stirring happenings. September brought the work of experimental artist Alexandra Exter to the Guggenheim Museum in the exhibit "Amazons of the Avant-Garde," a compelling performance of John Taras' version of the ballet "Firebird" by the Dance Theater of Harlem at City Center and the opening of an exhibit of selected works of the modernist painter Halyna Mazepa at The Ukrainian Museum. As this issue of "Dateline New York" was being written, the Metropolitan Opera was about to unveil the first performances of its season, with bass Sergei Koptchak in the role of the Commendatore in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" on opening night and bass Paul Plishka as the exiled Tatar king Timur in Puccini's great opera "Turandot."

This month, the long-awaited opening of the first major exhibition of Scythian art in the United States in more than a quarter century, "Gold of the Nomads," takes place October 13 at the Brooklyn Museum, displaying over 170 exquisitely crafted objects once owned by nomadic horsemen who roamed the European steppes. Other October highlights include a Greenwich Village outing by jazz pianist and composer John Stetch, and the opening of the American Ballet Theater's fall season at City Center, which will bring before the public the brilliance of principal dancers Maxim Belotserkovsky, Irina Dvorovenko and Vladimir Malakhov, and the skills of corps member Vladislav Kalinin and composer Dmitry Polischuk. The Duquesne University Tamburitzans, with seven performers of Ukrainian ancestry in their ranks this season, will include a Ukrainian vocal selection in their newest program of Eastern European folk music and dance.

In November, tenor Michael Didyk of Ukraine's National Opera will join the cast of the New York City Opera Company in its new production of Verdi's "Rigoletto," making his New York debut as the petty Italian nobleman, the Duke of Mantua. The world-renowned Veriovka Ukrainian Song and Dance Ensemble of Kyiv, currently touring the United States and Canada, will arrive in the Big Apple in mid-November to bring its rousing program of traditional Ukrainian music and dance to the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College and the Lehman Center Concert Hall in the Bronx.

Turning to personalities in the spotlight, "Dateline New York" has news about Winnipeg-born actress Tamara Gorski, who will appear in an upcoming CBS miniseries "Haven;" the new endeavors of Broadway stars Jeremy Kushnier of "Footloose" and Christina Pawl of "Cabaret; the latest activities of actress/model Milla Jovovich, and the new career undertaken by leather designer Stepan Hankewycz.

An avant-garde Amazon

The Guggenheim Museum identifies Alexandra Exter as one of "six Russian women masters of early 20th-century art" in the exhibition "Amazons of the Avant-Garde." But if you'd like to inspect eight Exter works which may be on view for the first time in the United States, visit the Guggenheim anyway (it's located at Fifth Avenue and 89th Street). The exhibit, which opened on September 8 and runs through January 7, 2001, features more than 70 paintings and works on paper.

Although Exter's greatest contribution in art was in stage design, her importance as a colorist may be seen in her paintings, among them "The Bridge (Seyres)," "Cityscape" and "Construction of Colored Planes."

Arranged monographically, the exhibition focuses on the years before and after the Revolution and, regrettably, on painting alone. Exter excelled in painting, but she was influenced by Ukrainian embroidery, Futurist and Cubist ideas as well as the Suprematist style of Kazimir Malevich - influences that surfaced most strongly in her stage designs.

Born in Bialytsok, Poland, in 1882, Exter studied at the Kyiv Art School and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where she became acquainted with such artists as Picasso, Braque and Archipenko. Traveling between Paris, Kyiv and Moscow from 1909 to 1914, she disseminated Cubist and Futurist ideas and also participated in exhibits in Kyiv, Odesa, St. Petersburg, Paris and Rome. She founded the Circle group of avant-garde artists in Kyiv with Alexander Bohomazov in 1914, organized a studio dedicated to the study of Ukrainian folk embroidery, ornamentation and painting, and taught in Odesa for two years.

She is probably identified as Russian because she worked with the Moscow Chamber Theater in 1916 and joined the faculty of the Moscow Higher Artistic and Technical Workshop in 1921. She began to work in fashion design that year, and in 1923 created sets and costumes for the Martian scenes in Yakov Protozanov's film "Aelita," which inspired science-fiction film for decades.

Mazepa, the modernist

Painter, graphic artist and ceramist Halyna Mazepa (1910-1995) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, was educated in Ukraine and Czecho-Slovakia, lived for a time in Czecho-Slovakia, and spent the last 48 years of her life in Venezuela. Yet there can be no question that Mazepa was Ukrainian in every fiber of her being. One need only glimpse the 29 works now on view at The Ukrainian Museum (through November 26) to feel the vibrant Ukrainian spirit that imbues her creativity.

The paintings, tempera and gouache works, drawings and ceramic pieces mounted by the museum reveal Mazepa's love for Ukrainian historical, folkloric and literary themes ( for example, Taras Shevchenko's poems "Kateryna" and "Poplar"). Many of the paintings depict female figures, as in the 1948 oil on canvas "Water Nymphs." Some of the pieces come from her early years, when she focused on a mystical impressionist palette; the majority reveal the neo-Byzantine genre that became her singular style, marked by an icon-like simplicity of line and composition, flat planes and vibrant contrasting colors.

Among the vivid canvasses to which the viewer's eye is quickly drawn are Mazepa's 1955 oil "Dream," showing a sleeping boy leaning on his mother's shoulder; the 1960 oil "Midsummer Night's Bonfires," wherein a young woman appears to be jumping over huge angular flames, and the 1956 oil on board, almost 4 by 5 feet in size and titled "Dance," featuring four women in orange and rust-colored costumes moving through a circle dance. Two dramatic oils focus attention on the Zaporozhian Kozaks.

Most of the works are on loan from the collection of Dr. Ilarion and Svitlana Cholhan, who have generously donated the largest work in the exhibition, "Dance," to the museum. The 1983 oil on canvas "Three Generations" is the gift of Yaroslava Luszpysnka-Yarosevych. Several book illustrations, tempera works and gouaches are on loan from Bohdan Koval, Mazepa's son, and his wife, Marta.

Ms. Mazepa was born in St. Petersburg when her parents, Isaak Mazepa, an agronomist who became a noted Ukrainian political leader and statesman, and Natalia Singalevych Mazepa, a bacteriologist and teacher, were students there. She began her artistic career in the 1930s, illustrating Czech and Ukrainian books, magazines and postcards and designing theatrical and ballet costumes. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1948 in Caracas, Venezuela, after she resettled there from war-torn Europe with her husband, Volodymyr Koval. She worked as an animator and illustrator for Venezuelan magazines and the publishing house of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education, devoting her spare time to painting, ceramics and illustrating Ukrainian books.

A knockout performance

Leading off the New York Ethnic Music and Dance Festival at Lincoln Center on September 9, the eight-man Cheres Ukrainian Folk Ensemble delivered such dynamic Carpathian music that onlookers relinquished tree-shaded spots around the rim of Damrosch Park and filled up the sun-heated park benches near the stage. Front man Andriy Milavsky, an exuberant emcee and an absolute whiz on woodwind instruments, led the band through fast and furious polkas and dances. In "Ukrainian Fantasy" he switched from one variety of Carpathian flute to another; in other numbers, he introduced the piercing sound of the trembita or played the ocarina and the clarinet. Providing variety in the program with songs which told of pagan rites and life cycles, soprano Tania Vilkha was joined by drummer Liliana Dlaboha for the folk song "Ternytsia" and by Mr. Milavsky for a haunting duet.

Equal acknowledgment for the ensemble's electric performance should also go to instrumentalists Petro Horhaniuk (tsymbaly), Valeriy Zhmud (violin), Ihor Makar (viola), Roman Galynsky (accordion) and Oleh Ivanyschuk (bass).

As WNYC's John Schaefer continued to host performances by brightly costumed Filipino, American Indian and Irish dancers, Cheres members assembled outside the concert area to answer festival-goers' questions about Hutsul costumes and traditions. Many visitors to Lincoln Center's art fair, then in progress in a sea of white tents around the plaza, also stopped by the Cheres table, taking note of the hand-made folk instruments and the ensemble's latest CD "Cheres: From The Mountains to the Steppes."

Founded by Mr. Milavsky in 1990, the Cheres ensemble has become the foremost purveyor of traditional Carpathian music in the New York area. This year's appearances included a performance with the Voloshky Dancers of Philadelphia at "Ukrainian Night" in Manhattan's Battery Park and a Ukrainian-Italian wedding celebration (later shown on a TV food channel), as well as a summertime frolic at Soyuzivka and an engagement at the 50th anniversary of the Ukrainian Youth Association of Canada (SUMK) in Montreal.

"Firebird" continues to fly

Native New Yorker John Taras, a longtime associate of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins at the New York City Ballet, choreographed a new version of Stravinsky's revised "Firebird" Suite for Dance Theater of Harlem in the early 1980s. When it received its world premiere in 1982, The New York Times' Anna Kisselgoff described it as "a lively and fluent re-interpretation." In a review the following year, Ms. Kisselgoff pointed to "the inventive patterns and fluidity of Mr. Taras' choreography."

Mr. Taras' "Firebird," transplanted from Russia to a lush tropical forest designed by Geoffrey Holder, has continued to be highly popular with DTH audiences and dance critics. Last month, the compelling ballet received several performances and great reviews during Dance Theater of Harlem's two-week engagement at City Center. Jack Anderson of The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Taras makes events move along excitingly" and concluded that "the dancing (of Kellye A. Saunders as the Firebird) was as exciting as the choreography."

Since choreographing his first ballet, "Graziana," for the Ballet Theatre in 1945, Mr. Taras has produced a large number of ballets, more than 12 of them for the New York City Ballet, including "Concerto for Piano and Winds," "Daphnis and Chloe" and "Souvenir de Florence." He has staged Balanchine ballets such as "Apollo," "Prodigal Son," "Serenade" and "La Sonnabula" for companies in the United States and in Europe, among them Holland's Het National Ballet, England's Royal Ballet, Vienna's Staatsoper and the Royal Danish Ballet.

A professional dancer in the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Taras rose to soloist status while dancing with American Ballet Theatre from 1940 to 1945. After a season with the Markova-Dolin Company at the Chicago Opera, he danced and rehearsed classic ballets in the repertory of De Basil's Ballet Russes for their Covent Garden and Paris seasons, becoming choreographer and ballet master for the Grand Ballet Marquis de Cuevas from 1948 to 1953. Joining the New York City Ballet in 1960, he shared the position of ballet master with Balanchine and Robbins. He later became American Ballet Theater's associate artistic director. Now retired, he is often on hand to view performances of his stagings.

October highlights

• More than 170 precious artifacts from Ukraine's historic past, many of them excavated in the last decade, will be unveiled at the Brooklyn Museum of Art with the October 13 opening of the exhibition "Gold of the Nomads: Scythian Treasures from Ancient Ukraine." Already shown at the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this tour de force exhibition reveals gold treasures discovered in Scythian burial mounds - swords and scabbards, drinking cups, helmets, bow and arrow cases, necklaces, finials and other objects. The Brooklyn Museum of Art is located at 200 Eastern Parkway; for museum hours and directions call (718) 638-5000.
  
  
• Preserving and perpetuating the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe, the Tamburitzans of Duquesne University return to New York City on Saturday, October 14, with their annual celebration of folk music, dance and traditions. Their program, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Haft Auditorium of the Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 W. 27th St., will include the stirring adaptation of a popular Ukrainian folk song "Rushnychok" (The Embroidered Ritual Cloth). This year's roster of performers includes seven students of Ukrainian or part-Ukrainian ancestry, all of them from Pennsylvania.
  
  
• Jazz virtuoso John Stetch, first-prize winner of the Prix du Jazz at the 1998 Montreal Jazz Festival and a top prize winner (for composition) in the Thelonious Monk International Competition, has been working on a new CD in recent months. The CD is titled "Heaven of a Hundred Days" and Mr. Stetch says it includes "a couple of standards - but the rest of it is my original compositions." The public is welcomed to a CD release party planned for October 19 at 8 p.m. at Greenwich House, 27 Barrow St., in the Village. Mr. Stetch, who recently moved from Brooklyn to the Nyack area just north of the city, previously recorded five CDs, two of which were nominated for a Juno Award. Accompanied by bass player Johannes Weidenmueller and drummer Daniel Freedman, he will give concerts in Philadelphia (Chris's Cafe) on October 22 and in Washington (Blues Alley) on the 25th, then will make a cross-Canada solo tour that begins in Montreal on October 27-28 and ends in Calgary on November 16. He says his Canadian appearances, taking in Halifax, Toronto, Whitehorse, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Saskatoon, will feature "about 50 percent Ukrainian melodies."
  
  
• The American Ballet Theatre company, currently on its first visit to mainland China, will return in time for its fall season at City Center, opening with a gala program on October 24 that will feature principal dancers Maxim Belotserkovsky, Irina Dvorovenko and Vladimir Malakhov. The three Ukrainian-born dancers will appear in several programs throughout the two-week City Center engagement. The October 26 bill, for instance, will feature Mr. Belotserkovsky and Mr. Malakhov in Martha Graham's "Diversion of Angels," Mr. Malakhov in the Pas de Deux from Petipa's "The Sleeping Beauty" and Mr. Belotserkovsky as one of the principals in Harold Lander's "Études," and will include a performance of Robert Hill's "Baroque Game," set to the music of Dmitry Polischuk. The husband-wife team of Belotserkovsky and Dvorovenko is scheduled to perform the Pas de Deux from "The Sleeping Beauty" during the October 28 evening program. Corps member Vladislav Kalinin, who gave a marvelous performance as the doddering dolt Gremio in "The Taming of the Shrew" last spring, will appear with the company.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 1, 2000, No. 40, Vol. LXVIII

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