Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company returns to North America (04/12/98)

Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company returns to North America

TORONTO - The Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company is embarking on a North American tour starting April 24 that will take it to 38 cities across Canada and the U.S. in celebration of its 60th anniversary.

On tour through July will be 90 professionally trained dancers and musicians, under the direction of Myroslav Vantukh, artistic director of the company founded by the great choreographer and dancer Pavlo Virsky.

Conceived as a celebration of the spirit of a people through dance, the company's current program is characterized by choreography that spotlights virtuosity, agility and balletic prowess, along with wit and humor, on the part of the male dancers, and the beauty and grace of the female dancers.

The program consists of sequences alternating between what dance critic Clive Barnes referred to as the "the remarkable bounce and pounce of Ukrainian dancing," and the graceful and serene.

Ukraine's premiere dance company made its debut in 1958 at New York's old Metropolitan Opera House. The enthusiastic 25-minute ovation the company received for that performance prompted its return to North American stages in 1972 and then again in 1988.

This is the first time the troupe is appearing in a program devoid of token ideologically informed works that were an obligatory part of the company's repertoire in the past, prior to Ukraine's independence.

The tour begins in Providence, R.I., on April 24 and goes on to Maryland, Washington and upstate New York. Throughout the months of May and June, the troupe will tour Canada from coast to coast as well as perform in such major cities as Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Starting June 20, the company will be in Hartford, Conn., followed by appearances in New Brunswick, N.J. and in New York City's City Center on June 23-27.

The tour ends with a performance at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on June 28 and in Philadelphia's Merriam Theater - University of the Arts on June 30 and July 1. (For a complete listing of performances, see the advertisement in this issue of The Weekly.)

Under the sponsorship of Encore Productions of Cleveland, with Leonid Oleksiuk, and Donald G. Baker, a Toronto-based entrepreneur, as executive producers of the Virsky North American Tour, the dance company has been the focus of a high impact campaign in print, radio and television.

The dance company's past and present

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - The Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company, originally known as the State Dance Ensemble of Ukraine, was founded by Pavlo Virsky in 1951.

By combining brilliant ballet technique with traditional Ukrainian folk dance, Virsky created a company that gained worldwide acclaim of audiences and critics alike for its technically superb and innovative choreography.

Virsky attributed the style of the company to "the close ties we (Ukrainians) have with our national folk art and with the achievements in classical dance which is part of our heritage. ... Both elements are combined in our approach so that we may always maintain the highest level of technique together with a harmonious beauty of presentation." (Kyiv, 1966).

He noted that the operative principle informing his work was not the simple copying of ethnographic patterns of Ukrainian folk dance but rather the enrichment of existing forms "by means of creative interpretation."

The company was named after Virsky in 1977, two years after his death.

Virsky has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards in recognition of the significance of his contribution to the development of dance. His choreography has been a lasting and formative influence and has set a standard of excellence for generations of succeeding choreographers and artistic directors.

Such popular works as "Zaporozhtsi" (the dance of the Zaprozhian Kozaks),"Vyshyvalnytsi" (a dance of the embroiderers), as well as dances based on vignettes of everyday life and humor ("The Shoemaker," "New Boots"), apart from being signature works of the company, have long since entered the repertoires of Ukrainian dance companies in North America.

Born in Odesa on February 25, 1905, Virsky completed his studies at the Music and Drama School in his native city in 1927 and attended the Lunacharski Dance Technicum in Moscow (1927-1928).

His professional career began in 1928 when he joined the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater as a solo dancer and choreographer. For the next decade he worked as balletmaster at the Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kyiv theaters of opera and ballet.

During the war, he continued his artistic activities in groups set up among soldiers at the front. Later he was appointed artistic director of the dance troupe of Red Army Chorus (1942-1955).

Working in many theaters across the Soviet Union, he produced such ballets as Swan Lake, Raymonda, Esmeralda, Le Corsair and Don Quixote.

Virsky also devoted much time to research on folk dance and choreography .

Under Virsky's direction, the Dance Ensemble of Ukraine company's performances abroad were reviewed by leading dance critics, among them Clive Barnes and Anna Kisselgoff, and reviews were carried in such publications as: The New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Tribune (Oakland, Calif.) and San Francisco Chronicle, among others.

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Myroslav Vantukh was appointed artistic director of the company in 1980. Prior to his appointment, he was director and choreographer of the Yunist dance ensemble in Lviv. Mr. Vantukh has concentrated on reviving and revitalizing many of the renowned dances choreographed by Virsky that are the company's signature works. He has added to the Virsky legacy, creating such new works as: "The Carpathians," "Ukrainian Dance with Tambourines" and "Green Years."

Critical acclaim for Virsky

The following is an excerpt from a review by New York Post dance critic Clive Barnes of the State Dance Ensemble of Ukraine is third New York engagement in a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1972.

"The Ukrainian Dance Company is one of the most engaging and endearing in the world. It has an immediacy of impact that is simply bewitching, and its simplicity of manner is matched only by the brilliance of its technique."

"There are many folk dance ensembles in the world, some good, some bad and most indifferent. The Ukrainians differ from most by having genuine choreography to dance. ... Virsky is not content to weave together a pattern of virtuoso tricks, peasant humor and easy symmetries. Mr. Virsky is concerned with a form perhaps best described as a choreographic vignette."

"Every one of his dances, while based on Ukrainian folk dance, has been polished into an almost balletic form .... It is Virsky's care with the choreography, his skill with his raw material, that gives his dancers their chance. For this is one of the most purely enjoyable folk dance ensembles in the world. It has its own spirit, its own excitement.

"...This is dancing with no tomorrows. It has no intellectual appeal, and at times its brash peasant pleasantries may easily pall. Yet it has style, shape and that special quality without which no dance can exist, vitality."