Ukrainian artists look abroad for help as they defend their culture against Russian invasion
Ukrainian artists look abroad for help as they defend their culture against Russian invasion
The governments of the United States and of Europe have so far committed nearly $138 billion worth of combined assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion one year ago. Most of this help has been in the form of vital military and humanitarian aid. But Ukraine has other less obvious needs in its battle against President Vladimir Putin’s aggression: There is a cultural dimension to this conflict.
“The aim of this war is to destroy the culture and the language and the identity of Ukrainians,” said Viktor Ruban, a choreographer, theater producer and cultural impresario based in the capital, Kyiv. “We don’t fit in the Soviet box that Russia is trying to put everyone back into.”
Ruban believes he and his fellow practitioners of the performing arts — actors, classical musicians, theater directors, producers, playwrights, and sound and lighting specialists, among others — have an important role, expressing the Ukrainian identity that Putin is trying to flatten. But since these arts workers get a lot of their funding from the government, they have suffered a severe financial blow since the invasion.
“Shortly after Feb. 24 last year, officials told us, ‘We’re sorry but we have to give our budget to the army, and so there will be no funding for the independent scene this year,'” Ruban said.
Government funding for the performing arts in Ukraine, according to Ruban and other sources, was cut by 100% for the independents following last year’s invasion and more than 50% for the state sector that comprises the big theaters, opera houses and ballet companies.
Ruban has tried to soften the blow for some of his struggling colleagues by appealing for donations from sympathetic arts organizations abroad. So far, his Ukrainian Emergency Performing Arts Fund has raised and distributed more than $130,000 in relief grants in order to help arts workers remain in Ukraine.
Many other theater groups have also sought assistance from abroad.
“Independents were able to survive only by the private donations from our friends, theater makers and international supporters,“ said Alex Borovenskiy, a private theater director. “We got a lot of support from the U.K., from Europe and from U.S.A., but only from private, not government, sources. “
Like most aspects of life in Ukraine, live theater has been badly battered by the war. Many theater buildings have been damaged, and others have been turned into centers for humanitarian relief while the companies have relocated to smaller, makeshift premises — often underground. Performances have been curtailed by curfews, disrupted by constant blackouts and interrupted by frequent air raids. Many actors, technicians and other theater workers have either volunteered for the army or have been conscripted. But, Borovenskiy insisted, the performing arts have not failed or flagged in the face of the Russian onslaught.
“Yes, Ukrainian theaters do have a lot of hardships and troubles: lack of financing, lack of human resources, lack of space, constant air alerts — that’s true. But at the same time, every theater put up new productions in 2022,” he said.
There have been productions of every genre, from sober reflections on the impact of autocracy, to light-hearted farce, to explorations of the nature of heroism and the need for social justice in a post-war Ukraine. There have been productions that reveal an openness to other — especially European — cultures.
Borovenskiy, for example, is director of a theater company and a drama school that operates only in the English language. (Its motto is “To act is to breathe. To act in English is to breathe fire.”) But one world culture appears to be decidedly out of bounds for Ukrainian theaters and concert halls: that of Russia.
Theater producer and festival organizer Veronika Skliarova told Marketplace from her base in western Ukraine that for her and her colleagues, Russian material — however transcendent — has been irredeemably tainted by the invasion.
“I can easily refuse Russian culture, knowing the pain they bring to Ukraine,” Skliarova said. “With this culture — they have this foundation — they came here to kill. They’re coming here raping Ukrainian women and killing our kids. There’s no space for Russian culture here for anyone.”
And that includes the titans of Russian literature and music, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy? “Definitely it includes Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy,” she said.
Skliarova is convinced that culture is vitally important as a way of both sustaining the country’s national identity and enabling it to deal with the trauma of war. She’s involved in an innovative project that uses music as therapy to heal children bereaved or otherwise damaged psychologically by the conflict, and to lift their spirits as they sit in darkened bomb shelters with air raid sirens wailing.
Ukrainian culture has also been deployed abroad not only to raise money for humanitarian aid, but also to raise awareness of the country’s plight and to reinforce the message that what is at stake in this war is the survival of a civilized European nation.
Alla Sirenko, Ukrainian composer, pianist and president and founder of the Ukrainian Cultural Association in the U.K., has generated thousands of pounds for children’s hospitals in Kyiv and Lviv with a series of concerts outside the country. She premiered a new composition, “Elegy: Dedicated to the Heroic People of Ukraine,” in New York last November. Her overwhelming motivation, she said, is to prove that her country won’t be wiped off the map.
“The cultural identity of Ukraine has been under attack for centuries. But for centuries, Ukrainians have been very resilient with our culture and our language,” she said. “It never dies. This is what the country is fighting for.”
Call this the second front against the Russians: Ukraine’s very own, very real, culture war.
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