March in Kyiv Will Be Under the Sign of the Modern

The British Council, which has done a great deal to popularize modern choreography in Russia, finally turned its attention to Ukraine. The National Russian Drama Theater in Kyiv will accommodate the Britain's leading Rambert Dance Company Rambert, March 7-9. The program includes three one-act productions: Shivona Dyce's On the Road (music score by Steve Reich), Paul Taylor's Freshness (Handel), and Christopher Bruce's Rooster (the Rolling Stones).

The latter, a ballet authored by Rambert's artistic director, based on the famous British rock group's greatest hits, is a harshly realistic study in relations between the sexes and the sexual aggressiveness of modern youth.

I am not certain whether the management of the state-run Druzhba Theater has heard anything about the British Council's initiative, but they seem to have made a concerted action, announcing the World Ballet Stars Festival this March. Anyway, capital devotees will be still reliving the leading British company's performances when Druzhba offers them yet another excellent program. Well-known ballet groups like Valery Mikhailovsky's male ballet (St. Petersburg) and the Royal Spanish Ballet, rumored to arrive with the celebrated guitarist Paco de Lucia, are expected to perform in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia in March.