Cornelia Street Café presents "Ukrainian Night" to sold-out audiences (06/04/06)

Cornelia Street Café presents "Ukrainian Night" to sold-out audiences

NEW YORK - Ukraine came to Greenwich Village on April 29, when the world-famous Cornelia Street Café presented a "Ukrainian Night" in its appropriately "Bohemian" cabaret venue to two sold-out audiences.

"It was a breakthrough for Ukrainian culture," said poet Vasyl Makhno, one of the participants in the evening. "Never before has a New York-based American cultural institution devoted an entire evening to Ukrainian culture."

"Ukrainian Night" showcased Ukrainian-related films, poetry, music and fiction in English and Ukrainian. Both sets were hosted by award-winning fiction writer Irene Zabytko and Alexander Motyl, professor at Rutgers University.

The cinematic part of the evening included a 45-minute excerpt from Damian Kolodiy's feature-length documentary, "The Orange Chronicles," as well as four short films from Ukraine. Mr. Kolodiy's footage illustrated the dramatic confrontation between Pora youth activists and supporters of Viktor Yanukovych in eastern Ukraine in late 2004. By depicting his own response to the events, the film was as much a documentary of the Orange Revolution as a story of his personal self-discovery as a young Ukrainian American artist.

Prof. Yuri Shevchuk, lecturer in Ukrainian language at Columbia University and head of the Ukrainian Film Club at the Harriman Institute, introduced the film shorts from Ukraine, beginning with Ihor Strembitsky's "Wayfarers," winner of the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Filmed on a tiny budget in a grainy black and white, the film consists of a series of shots of tortured people, confused faces and anonymous places - all on the way to nowhere. It was thanks to the tenacity of Mr. Strembitsky's wife, Natalia Kononchuk, who wrote the script and appears in the film, that "Wayfarers" was submitted to the Cannes festival.

Like "Wayfayers," three animated shorts also provided biting commentaries on today's reality in Ukraine. Stepan Koval's claymation "Streetcar No. 9," winner of the Silver Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003, features the rousing misadventures of a ramshackle streetcar and its squabbling occupants.

Mr. Koval's equally hilarious "Zlydni" showed what happens when bad times - depicted as oddly shaped Russian-speaking characters - descend on a hardworking Hutsul family in the Carpathians.

Oleksandr Shmyhun's "Play for Three Actors" (2004) starred two good-natured puppets manipulated by their puppeteer into engaging in acts of violence against each other.

The evening's literary segment featured Ms. Zabytko reading excerpts from her novel, "The Sky Unwashed," which portrays the elderly survivors of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster living in the exclusion zone. This highly acclaimed book was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program and was also a Book Sense "76 Pick" Selection.

She also read a humorous excerpt from her fiction collection, "When Luba Leaves Home," which takes place in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Chicago. Ms. Zabytko is currently the literature contributor for The Arts Connection, an Orlando-based radio program about the arts in Central Florida that airs on WMFE-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate.

Prof. Motyl read from "Whiskey Priest," his first novel, which depicts a disillusioned KGB assassin and an insecure Ukrainian American female U.S. diplomat who track down an Ivy League professor running a prostitution ring in Ukraine. The author of six academic books, Prof. Motyl is also a painter; his two most recent shows were at the Ukrainian Institute of America in 2004 and 2005.

Mr. Makhno delighted the audience with readings of his poetry in Ukrainian, followed by Dr. Orest Popovych, the recently elected head of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, who read his translations of Dr. Makhno's poems. Since 1993, Dr. Makhno has published six books of poetry and a collection of translations of the prominent Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, and compiled an anthology of new Ukrainian poetry.

Andriy Milavsky, Halyna Remez and Roman Galynsky of the Cheres musical ensemble offered 45 exuberant minutes of foot-stomping, high-energy, crowd-pleasing "Ukrainian Bluegrass" melodies on accordion, violin and a variety of wooden flutes that rocked the house and thrilled the audience.

Mr. Milavsky, a graduate of the Kyiv State Conservatory of Music, founded Cheres in 1990. He has been compared to jazz great Charlie Parker by Dean Olsher of WNYC's "Next Big Thing" radio show; Cheres has been declared "the premier Ukrainian acoustic folk ensemble in the U.S." by Michael Shapiro, producer of Ellipsis Arts.

As a special treat, bandura/kobzar master Julian Kytasty graciously performed two impromptu songs for voice and sopilka. A world-class solo musician, Mr. Kytasty also collaborates with other famous artists, such as the Ukrainian Canadian ensemble From Paris to Kyiv, and most recently with the Chinese pippa (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument) virtuoso Wu Man at Carnegie Hall.

The "Ukrainian Night" took place in the intimate nightclub setting of the Cornelia Street Café's basement, a venue that regularly features artistic performances by renowned American and foreign writers, poets, artists and musicians. The decision to spotlight Ukrainian culture for an entire evening belongs to Cornelia Street Café owner Robin Hirsch (who is also the author of the highly touted memoir, "Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski") and poet-in-residence Angelo Verga.

"Ukrainian Night represented the mainstreaming of Ukrainian culture," said Prof. Motyl. "There's no going back to the ghetto."

Because of the exceptional turnout, many people were turned away at the door. But they'll have a chance to experience another Ukrainian Night at the Cornelia Street Café in 2007.

"This is going to be an annual event," said Ms. Zabytko. "We were invited to put together another show at the café for next year. It's great to bring so many outstanding artists together on one stage - and in a very cool and cutting-edge venue."

Meanwhile, Ms. Zabytko and Prof. Motyl are planning a similar event at New York's Bowery Poetry Club in September. "Who knows," said Ms. Zabytko with a smile, "maybe we'll do Town Hall some day."

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