Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-8gtf8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-17T11:58:17.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ballet in Ukraine: From Uncertainty to Defiance and Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2023

Ania Nikulina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is dedicated to analyzing existing cultural tensions between nationalism and neo-imperialism through the prism of oral narratives of ballet training in post-Soviet Ukraine. I present and reflect on the results of a three-month-long ethnographic field study, which took place at a primary state-sponsored ballet school in Ukraine—the Kyiv State Choreographic School. My article seeks to investigate the role and position of Ukrainian state-sponsored ballet at a crossroads of political and cultural crisis, when a new identity may rise from the ruins of a previously constructed cultural monolith of Soviet ballet. I explore the complex history and present condition of classical ballet training in Kyiv, Ukraine, and reveal it as both a contested cultural space and an important barrier to political radicalization. I show that ballet training centers of Ukraine successfully resist co-optation by both neo-imperial and nationalist ideologies, forming robust and inclusive dancing communities that in many ways mirror structures of modern Ukrainian society.

Keywords

balletconflictidentityimperialismindependencenationalismRussiaUkraine
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , April 2023 , pp. 6 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aleksievich, Svetlana. 2016. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research.” TDR 46 (2): 145–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, Claire. 2015. Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ezrahi, Christina. 2014. Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. “Dancing Bodies.” In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, edited by Desmond, Jane C., 235–258. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822397281-013CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. New York: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.Google Scholar
Hamera, Judith. 2007. Dancing Communities: Performance, Difference, and Connection in the Global City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230626485CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homans, Jennifer. 2010. Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Kofman, Michael, and Rojansky, Matthew. 2015. A Closer Look at Russia's Hybrid War. Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Google Scholar
Lieven, Anatol. 1999. Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Randy. 1998. “Between Technique and the State: The Univers(ity) in Dance.” In Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics, 151–180. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, Simon. 2009. The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand.Google Scholar
Nelson, Amy. 2004. Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Nikulina, Ania. 2019. “Maya Plisetskaya's The Carmen-Suite: Recovering a Hidden Repertoire.” Theater Journal 71 (2): 191–209.
Plisetskaya, Maya. 2015. Ya, Maya Plisetskaya [I, Maya Plisetskaya]. Moscow: Olma Media Group.Google Scholar
Ross, Janice. 2015. Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.10.12987/yale/9780300207637.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2018. The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin's Russia. Washington: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. 2014. Stalin's Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford Scholarship Online.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378449.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. 2020. Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar