Ukraine is one of the world’s great exporters of star dancers. The Royal Ballet’s Alina Cojocaru, Ivan Putrov and Sergei Polunin were all trained in Kiev, although the poetry of their dancing is pure St Petersburg. “It’s our cradle,” says Sergei Najenko, principal dancer and choreographer with the Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Lviv. “We are all, all, all children of the Russian ballet.”
Pictured:
A design for Verdi’s opera “A Masked Ball” by Tadey Ryndzak, a disciple of the late Eugene Lysyk, whose ideas helped shape the Lviv ballet. Lysyk’s sets combine baroque gorgeousness with kitschy surrealism and reflect the extravagance of Lviv itself.
The Washington Post called Lysyk’s decor for “Parsifal” “a mix of magically beautiful and truly hideous”, and that tradition lives on here.
