“First of all – the Ukrainian spirit”

For the third time, the patrons from California – the family of Ivan and Maria Hnipa – support the public initiative aimed at finding talented boys and girls under the age of 25, who take interest or professionally work in theater, lite-rature, journalism, fine arts and music. The jury sections of this competition are headed by well-known representatives of Dnipropetrovsk’s creative intellectuals. The young actor Anatolii Koroliov was declared the winner in this year’s “Theater” nomination for skillful performance of the leading role in Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s play Shelmenko the Batman on the stage of Dnipropetrovsk’s Shevchenko Theater of Music and Drama. His colleague Maksym Podorozhny became the winner of the award for successful stage realizations of Ukrainian theatrical classics in the same theater during the recent years. In the “Fine Arts” category, the jury announced the young artist Natalia Kasianova as a winner – for an original performance of theatrical poster series for staging Ukrainian classics in Mykhailo Melnyk’s Dnipropetrovsk Theater of One Actor “Scream,” and also for the highly artistic design of books by Ukrainian authors. Works by Kasianova were exhibited not only in Ukraine, but also in the neighboring Poland. The master-beginner Iryna Makogon was recognized as a prize winner in the same category for “inspiring picturesque scenery of Ukrai-nian nature, created in recent years.” In the “Music” category, the possessor of a unique voice Anton Sydoruk became the laureate “for skillful performing and popularizing modern Ukrainian pop song.” Olena Andrieieva was declared the prize winner in this nomination for bright performance of patriotic themed songs. And finally, in the “Literature” nomination, the laureate’s title was awarded to Albina Tkachenko – for poems dedicated to “the theme of national revival and problems of spiritual responsibility in modern Ukraine.” The prize winner in the same nomination was Kateryna Suprun for original journalistic poetry.

“Few young people come to creative unions today. But most importantly, there are young talents. We see that the national subject is not only sharovary and vyshyvanka, but first of all, the Ukrainian spirit. And it is alive! Because a person always chooses national culture – bad when it’s a foreign one, good when it is native,” said the head of a jury section, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine Olena Nakonechna-Hodenko. The other jury member, writer Volodymyr Lutsenko, noted: “Isn’t it a shame when the support of Ukrainian creative youth is cared about not here in Ukraine, but across the ocean? Our magnates don’t need all this, they are engaged in accumulating their capitals – but they are temporary.”

The organizer of the competition, editor-in-chief of the Borysthenes magazine Fidel Sukhonis told how the idea of this contest emerged during his trip to the US. “Ivan and Maria Hnipa are elderly people, the representatives of the third wave of Ukrainian emigration to the US,” he said. “Their fa-mily has achieved success in America, being engaging in agrarian business. Although they live far away from their homeland, in their soul they are always in Ukraine.” Ivan Hnipa comes from the Kyiv region – from Obukhiv, where he and his large family support book publishing. “The Ukrainian diaspora in California,” recalls Sukhonis, “don’t live compactly, and so that his grandchildren could study Ukrainian language, their grandfather drove them more than a hundred kilometers to Los Angeles, which is already very conspicuous. During our acquaintance, Mr. Ivan asked if he could help Ukrainian people living in Dnipropetrovsk. Thus was born the idea of a competition for creative youth, which is financially supported by this family.” It is interesting that the summing up of the competition took place in the coffee house “Chenlibel,” the hall of which was kindly provided to the Borysthenes magazine by the cafe owner – head of the regional organization of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Ukraine Gudrat Gadzhiyev. “Historically, our nations have much in common,” he said. “When we, former residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, started having life problems and thus lost the roof over our heads, Ukraine gave us shelter, so it became our second home. Therefore, it is our duty to help Ukrainians in everything we can.”