By Lesia GANZHA, The Day
A semi-vacant semi-park on the banks of the Dnipro will very soon be proudly
called a Show Park. The organizers announced at a July 6 press conference
that this will happen on July 22. The main sights to see in the latter
will be the Fiery Serpent, a gigantic movable iron robot, and a theater
designed to show the extravaganza, Golden Gates of the Millennium, five
times a week. This mass oriented program by Vasyl Vovkun is already famous
for embodying the baroque principle of the three objectives of a creative
work: to teach, thrill, and entertain. It is, first of all, the mysterious
interpretation of the history of Ukraine, from the foundation of Kyiv to
the future foreseen in "the epoch of cosmic coexistence with extraterrestrial
civilizations." Since the project authors stress that the Show Park is,
above all, a place for family recreation, from now on those children who
are used to doing their school homework from 9 p. m. to midnight will be
able to improve their knowledge (not so inexpensively as in high school:
show tickets will cost 10 to 80 hryvnias). As to the second principle,
they mainly decided to strike us with grandiose scale: the total stage
area is 27 x 54 square meters, the props are 27 meters high, and the place
for the audience seats over 2000 spectators. Also to be featured are "supermodern
show technologies never before used in Ukraine " (we quote directly) and
a cast of 507 actors in a show, which is already stunning. As to the purely
entertainment part, it will feature, the organizers announced, Bohdan Stupka,
Iryna Shynkaruk, the Virsky Dance Ensemble, Song and Dance Ensemble of
the Ukrainian Border Forces, Ukrainian Cossacks Equestrian Theater, and
drama school students. It remains to be seen how much fun all this will
be, but it is certain to satisfy any taste. As journalists were repeatedly
told, commercial considerations are not the main objective of the Show
Park. Can one possibly speak of money, when it is advertised that the third
millennium will come in through mammoth golden gates "not only in the creative
imagination but also in truth?" And admission to the Show Park is free
for the millennium, as it is for orphans.
