The Repertoire Strategy of the Kyiv Modern Ballet after the Full-Scale Russian Invasion to Ukraine: Tomorrow, DiscrimiNATION, and One Minute Before Christmas Ballet Productions

Abstract

After the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion to Ukraine in February 2022, the Kyiv Modern Ballet Academic Theater stopped its activities for several months. However, already in 2023, the renewed company under the direction of choreographer Radu Poklitaru presented first performances of three ballet productions. Poklitaru’s ballet Tomorrow, set to the music of the second movements of Chopin’s First and Second Piano Concertos, continues the tradition of ballet Chopinianas: a twenty-minute-long, plotless composition tries to capture the sense of the future, of tomorrow, which in the first months of the Great War seemed lost forever. Twice as long and generally bigger, the ballet production DiscrimiNATION, set to music by George Frideric Handel (fragments from oratorios, operas and instrumental works) and piano Bagatelles by Valentyn Silvestrov, explores through dance various forms of discrimination, e.g., bullying, ageism, homophobia, social and media pressure, shrinking private space and rising social inequality. Developing the line of socially engaged theater, DiscrimiNATION, directed by Radu Poklitaru, is far from moralizing or direct political statement. The third production of the Kyiv Modern Ballet in 2023 was directed by Serhii Kon. One Minute Before Christmas is a family-friendly production, which, in the form of a ballet fairy tale, very close to today’s war reality, interprets the nature of evil and at the same time parodically reinterprets the previous productions of the theater, in particular, the ballets The Nutcracker and Swan Lake set to Tchaikovsky’s music (after February 2022, Kyiv Modern Ballet suspended all performances set to music by Russian composers, including those based on Russian literary works). The 2023 productions revealed three promising and at the same time contrasting trends in the repertoire strategy of the Kyiv Modern Ballet: “ballet essays,” plotless performances that reinterpret the neoclassical tradition of the twentieth century; social dance theater that sets itself specific tasks and tries to influence current public debates; and artistically persuasive and commercially successful productions for young audiences.