DATELINE NEW YORK: From Ukraine, with love (06/22/97)

DATELINE NEW YORK: From Ukraine, with love

by Helen Smindak

Last year we were privileged to enjoy several performing groups from Ukraine - the Veryovka Ukrainian National Song and Dance Company, the Ensemble of Song and Dance of Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Black Sea Ukrainian Dance Ensemble, the Les Kurbas Theater of Lviv, the sensational film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" and a recital by four piano prodigies who won top marks in Kyiv's first international Horowitz competition.

This season brought no large gift packages from Ukraine until the past month, when two performing groups hit town on two consecutive days. The Lvivski Muzyky, a four-man band that specializes in polka-tempo melodies which lend themselves well to weddings, christenings and banquets, gave a concert at the Ukrainian National Home in Manhattan on June 1. The very next day, the renowned Lviv Ukrainian Drama Theater appeared at the Ukrainian Institute of America on Fifth Avenue with a prize parcel of excerpts from a variety of operettas in its repertoire.

While the drama troupe has completed its tour and departed our shores, the Lviv band plans to spend a few months in the U.S. After making their New York debut at the Ukrainian Festival in downtown Manhattan in May, the foursome strutted into the Ukrainian Home two weeks later with a two-hour package of songs and instrumental music that had listeners' toes tapping and spirits dancing. There were folk songs and Lemko songs, lullabies, romantic ballads, humorous ditties and those rousing marches beloved by soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen (Sichovi Striltsi).

All four members of the group are vocalists, and they succeed in blending their voices harmoniously. Three of them display their talents on several instruments. Stepan Pyhytiak-Neshkoda plays the guitar and mouth organ; Bohdan Zhovtulia is a violinist, guitarist and drummer; while Volodymyr Kovalchuk entertains on the accordion and flute. Ivan Mazur, the band's artistic director, backs up the others by strumming the bass; as the group's spokesman, he also throws in a bouncy commentary throughout the show.

The audience at the Ukrainian Home was sparse, due to competition from several other Ukrainian events that day, but the Lviv musicians were optimistic about turnouts for their upcoming performances in New York state. They will appear at the Ukrainian American Youth Association (SUM-A) camp in Ellenville during the July 4 weekend, then the Slavonic Festival in Yonkers on July 12, and go on to the Vekhovyna Festival in Glen Spey on July 19. After that, it's Syracuse on July 27 and Soyuzivka in Kerhonkson on August 2. They will wind up their summer fling with a performance in Hempstead, Long Island, on August 10 before heading south for a proposed tour of Florida.

Since its formation in 1989, the Lviv ensemble has striven to propagate Ukrainian music, culture and spirit in Ukraine and outside its borders. To this end, the group has appeared in Poland, Germany, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia. It has also made trips to Siberia, England, Canada and even to distant Australia, where members had the pleasure of performing for the governor of Australia.

Anyone who would like to hear the group can attend one of their concerts. Failing that, simply acquire the Lvivski Muzyky CD issued in Winnipeg during their Canadian tour, or one of their five LPs or four videos, and have yourself a country-style Ukrainian hoe-down!

Lviv's famous actors

The Lviv Ukrainian Drama Theater, which opened its U.S. tour in Chicago at the end of May, is popularly known as the Zankovetska Drama Theater. It was named in honor of Maria Zankovetska, the famous Ukrainian actress, singer and theater activist who made her debut in 1882 in Ivan Kotliarevsky's "Natalka Poltavka."

The Zankovetska tour group consisted of 22 versatile, young and gifted actors, who sing and dance as well as emote. Performing operettas such as "Natalka Poltavka," Yaroslav Barna's "Sharika" and other works, they delighted audiences in Cleveland, in the upstate New York communities of Rochester and Binghamton, and in South Bound Brook and Irvington, N.J. (though I've been told someone in New Jersey grumbled about the "travesty" taken in adding some fresh ideas to the "Natalka" operetta). Their itinerary included Boston and Detroit, with a repeat performance in Chicago before leaving for Ukraine.

In the Metropolitan New York area, the actors found two venues - namely, Hempstead, Long Island, and Yonkers, N.Y. - but oddly enough, were unable to track down a suitable location in New York City for an early June date. Rescue came from the United Ukrainian Organizations of New York and the Lydia Krushelnytsky Drama Studio, which arranged for the visitors to perform at the Ukrainian Institute of America.

Here, an evening of songs, dances and recitations from Ukrainian operettas and dramatic works enabled the actors to parade their talents. Major attention was given by the troupe to the romantic operetta "Sharika." Excerpts from this popular operetta included a song-and-dance routine by two young lovers, Iryna Pidlypna and Nazar Stryhun; an enchanting vocal selection by the trio of Iryna Shumeyko, Ludmila Nikovchuk and Natalka Lanj; and a dance by five young ladies vying for the attention of one man. Also from "Sharika": a quartet of youthful Sichovi Striltsi soldiers, singing and dancing Broadway-style with a coquettish Sharika, played by Lesia Vankovska.

In other proceedings, actor Bohdan Kozak offered a powerful and emotional recitation of verses from Bohdan Antonych. Yevhen Fedorchenko delivered a humorous satire on village life, mimicking male and female voices, and Ira Turchyn pirouetted and twirled through a graceful Ukrainian folk dance. Commentary for the evening was provided most charmingly by actress Taissa Lytvynenko, a national artist of Ukraine.

Fedir Stryhun, the troupe's artistic director, observed before the show that the Zankovetska Theater is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Founded as the Zankovetska Theater in Kyiv in 1922, it became a touring theater in the Donetsk and Poltava regions in the 1920s, the resident drama theater in Zaporizhia in the 1930s, and worked in Siberia during the war. Based in Lviv since 1944, its repertoire has included Shakespearean tragedies and other world classics as well as Ukrainian classics, modern Ukrainian plays and works of contemporary Ukrainian playwrights, and new Western European repertoire.

Mr. Stryhun said he was pleased to note that the American tour was dedicated to the actors of Halychyna, actors like Mrs. Krushelnytsky who managed to flee from Soviet-dominated Ukraine in the 1940s and propagate Ukrainian theater in the Western world. He also extended thanks to the sponsor of the touring group, Kateryna Nemyra of Cleveland, who heads the Svitlytsia cultural center and hosts a Ukrainian radio program there.

The man from Odesa

Superstar Viktor Petrenko may be zany on the ice when he's doing a humorous number in a skating show, but in private life he's quiet, modest, soft-spoken, a gentle man and a gentleman. That is the impression I received when this import from Ukraine called me last week from Arizona to chat about Campbell's Soups 1997 Tour of World Figure Skating Champions.

I can also say that he's a conscientious and persistent man, which may explain how he became one of the world's finest technical skaters. Alerted by the show's New York publicist that I had requested an interview, he left messages on my answering machine from Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and finally caught me in my office on his third call.

Mr. Petrenko has been on the road since April 16, and will have performed in 59 cities from coast to coast by the time the tour ends in Los Angeles on July 13.

This is his 10th World Champions tour, and on June 22 he is appear at Madison Square Garden in New York, along with a star-studded international cast of over 30 athletes, including Oksana Baiul, Brian Boitano, Ruddy Galindo, Nicole Bobek, Michelle Kwan and Elvis Stojko.

The Odesa native, who has been dubbed "the Baryshnikov of ice," takes the spotlight in a humorous solo number titled "I'm Too Sexy," and appears in the show's opening and closing numbers as well.

He told me he likes all styles of skating - classical, dramatic and funny. At home in Simsbury, Conn., he normally puts in three hours of practice each day, but traveling from city to city consumes so much time that "we don't get a chance to practice on the road, just a 30-minute warm-up before the show."

He admires Brian Boitano's grace and skill on the ice, and Scott Hamilton's daredevil style and personality. For himself, he has this wish: to keep on skating "as long as possible." There are professional events in the offing, he says, "a lot of interesting things" - but details have not been firmed up.

On the subject of Ukrainian skating stars, he squelched any idea that champion skaters with Ukrainian-sounding names - Oksana Grishuk, Sergei Ponomarenko and Ilia Kulik - are Ukrainian. "They are Russian," he said firmly. "Only I and Oksana (Baiul) and Vyacheslav Zahorodniuk, who performed in seven shows early in the tour, are Ukrainian." The only other big-name Ukrainian skaters he knows are Iryna Romanova and Ihor Yaroshenko, an ice dancing couple "preparing in the U.S., I'm not sure where."

Mr. Petrenko started skating at age 5 and first gained international attention in 1984 when he won the World Junior Championship. By 1988 he had won medals in the Olympics, and the European and World Championships, and in 1992 he defeated the favored world champion, Kurt Browning, skating off with both the Olympic and World crowns.

The popular performer, who turns 28 on June 27 (he'll be in Spokane, Wash., that day) has a younger brother, Vladimir, also a former world junior champion, who is now coaching in Simsbury. His wife, Nina Melnick, the daughter of his longtime coach, Halyna Zmiyevska, is a skater who has turned her attention to teaching ballet in Connecticut. His parents live in Ukraine, and he visits them whenever time allows.

For relaxation, the skating star turns to books, music and sports, in particular soccer and ping-pong.

His personal statistics: he's 5-foot-9-inches tall, weighs 140 pounds, and has blonde hair and brown eyes.

And now, coming out onto the ice: Viktor Petrenko of Ukraine!

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