Ballet festival at the Lviv Opera

The Lviv Opera hosted the opening of the 14th international festival “Ballet Stars: High Flight.” For the first time, Vadym Pysariev, the noted Ukrainian ballet dancer and organizer of one of the world’s most prestigious competitions, opened his festival not in his native city of Donetsk but in Lviv.

“Here you find especially demanding and knowledgeable audiences,” said Pysariev, adding, “We brought to Lviv experienced ballet dancers from Russia, Japan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Ukraine’s best dancers, and pupils from the Donetsk school of choreography.”

The Lviv Opera was packed, even though ticket prices reached 200 hryvnias, and the spectators welcomed the contestants with a standing ovation. Among the audience favorites were Ukraine’s National Opera soloists Olena Filipieva, Mykola Mykheiev, Maksym Bernadsky, Maksym Chepyka; Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Academic Music Theater’s Olga Sizykh, Katerina Zhytkova; the Bolshoi’s Alena Kazakova and Lviv’s Oleh Petryk; the phenomenal Uzbek dancer Ulvio Azizov (Latvian National Opera), and guests from the Japanese Opera Akari Kawasaki and the “Ukrainian Japanese” dancers Takiti Shinobu and Nobuhiro Terada.

The gala concerts in October and November will take place in a number of Ukrainian cities. The finale will be held in Kyiv and Donetsk, with the fiery hopak Ukrainian dance performed by Vadym Pysariev with the guest stars from Lviv and Japan.