SOUNDS AND VIEWS: Virsky: the video (05/09/99)

SOUNDS AND VIEWS

by Roman Sawycky

Virsky: the video

Filmed at the Ukraina Palace Theatre in Kyiv, with Myroslava Oleksiuk-Baker as producer-director, the video "Virsky: The Spirit of Ukraine" translates and condenses the dancing spirit of Ukraine into 53 minutes of audio-visual excitement. The time-tested name of the company's founder Pavlo Virsky has become a banner for the Ukrainian National Dance Company, now led by Myroslav Vantukh, artistic director.

The videotape's attractive packaging features skillfully honed texts - a quality most welcome also in the printed program of the company's 60th anniversary tour (1998). Much of that writing made its way into the video; musical, well-choreographed phrasing and sweeping images set the stage for spectacle: "The sky, the sea, the mountains and the fields ... These are the elements that shape a people ... These are the events that forge a nation ... These are the traditions that define a soul ... this is the spirit - The Spirit of Ukraine."

While Vasile Avramenko laid the foundation for dance in North America by celebrating its folk origins, Mr. Virsky's synthesis of tradition with brilliant ballet technique and professional musicianship attracted more contemporary audiences. Likewise, this video may have more immediate appeal to today's sophisticated viewers who can discover Ukraine through dance rather than more traditional documentary film-making.

Visually stunning both live and on tape, the company shines in choreography by both Messrs. Virsky and Vantukh, using established orchestrations by I. Ivashchenko, V. Yarovinsky and others. While adequate, the symphonic element of the video did not quite reach the lofty level of the video footage and fell short of its full potential.

Nonetheless, there is much to admire when heroic and lyric images alternate smoothly, and the dance footage dissolves into historical flashbacks of the swaggering Zaporozhtsi or the poetic imagery of springtime. At times the additional action of these Kozaks became puzzling without narration, but when defiant cannons roar along the historical roads to power and freedom, such Kozak exuberance needs no explanation.

Certainly the "Povzunetz" tickles the funnybone as the boastful men show off their "indestructible Ukrainian knees" (The New York Times), while youthful affection is tenderly portrayed in "Podolianochka."

The video's aim is to show artistic beauty, and fine footwork, and these are plain to see via good camera work. Watching a small screen one may notice more than when looking at a large but distant stage.

The video's first-rate intercutting of long shots with close-ups catches precision enhanced by poetry, bravado tempered with beauty. This montage of sight and sound seems a virtuoso portrayal just as committed to the cause as Virsky must have been.

The troupe's stay in the New York area was brief, but this video allows viewers to relive the perfection of Virsky and the "Spirit of Ukraine."

This 1998 video was produced by Encore Productions Inc. of Toronto, with Donald Baker and Leonid Oleksiuk acting as co-executive producers.

When ordering contact: Kinofilm, 37 Hanna Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 1W9; telephone, (416) 537-2604, ext. 242; fax, (416) 538-1794; and e-mail: [email protected].

The cost of the video is $29.95, plus $3.75 for shipping and handling charge. Also available is the companion release, "The Music of Virsky" - on a compact disc at $17 and audio cassette for $12, plus $3.75 each for shipping and handling.

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