BALLET CRITICISM ON THE PAGES OF THE NEW ART MAGAZINE (KHARKIV, 1925-1928)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse and typologize the ballet criticism of the magazine New art (Kharkiv, 1925–1928). To achieve this goal, a number of principles and methods were used: the historical approach and analytical method make possible to analyse scientific and critical articles in the chronological order, the comparative method – to compare articles separating common and distinct ideas and concepts; the typological method – to classify critical publications on ballet topics. The scientific novelty of the article is that the content of the magazine New Art (Kharkiv, 1925–1928) was analysed through the prism of ballet criticism for the first time. Conclusions. In the conditions of the gradual departure from the ideas of the proletarian culture of the early 1920s in the USSR, with a complete rejection of the academic traditions of classical ballet, in the middle of 1920s there was a turn to a certain independence of the Ukrainian culture, Ukrainianlanguage magazines appeared, including the theatrical weekly New art, the content of which included the ballet criticism. The magazine reflects some aspects of the emergence of theatre studies (within which ballet studies developed) in Ukraine, which went parallel with the formation of ballet criticism. Rather conditionally, the content of publications of the New art related to ballet criticism can be divided into groups: theatrical theoretical and methodological (Ya. Mamontov and others); on the theoretical aspects of theatre, in particular, ballet criticism (I. Turkeltaub, K. Rafalskyi, M. Khrystovyi); ballet reviews, interviews, reviews, reports, chronicles (Yu. Zhihela, P. Kozytskyi, F. Malkov, H. Neivi). The New art conceptualized requirements for theatrical, including ballet, criticism: social (orientation to the ruling class of the proletariat), ideological and axiological (the transition from the propaganda of revolutionary and abstract, agitational to ideological and artistic values), anthropological (the formation of a physically and mentally new person). The two groups can be distinguished among the ballet reviews: the first – non-ideological publications, mainly applying an aesthetic and artistic approach to reviewing; the second group consists of those who condemn experimentation (constructive, body-plastic, etc.), focusing on the formation of mono-ideological approaches.