DATELINE NEW YORK: Olympic star prepares to shine again (06/01/03)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Olympic star prepares to shine again

by Helen Smindak

After a two-year hiatus, Olympic gold medalist and world figure skating champion Oksana Baiul is making a comeback into the realm of professional figure skating. Now in training in Virginia, she plans to return to the professional skating circuit in September, joining Katarina Witt and her friends in Bridgeport, Conn., to prepare for the November start of Ms. Witt's new touring show.

Speaking to me by phone from Richmond, Ms. Baiul sounded excited yet poised about the prospect of going out on the ice and thrilling fans again.

"I'm working my butt off, I want to be as good as I can," she said, "and I've got my coach from 1994 - Valentin Nikolayev - supervising my training. I'm continuing to design my skatewear fashions, for which a new catalogue has just been published, and I'm looking forward to a very exciting time."

She's also engaged, she told me, to "a wonderful guy from Ukraine who's in the sportswear business. His name is Gene Sunik, he's from Kharkiv, he's the owner of North-Sportif outerwear in New York, and he's also helping me with my designs."

The two met at a Christmas party in Bayside, Queens, when Mr. Sunik's childhood friend invited him to the party and a co-worker brought along Ms. Baiul. So far, there are no definite wedding plans - "hopefully, next summer," according to Ms. Baiul.

Ms. Baiul made a preliminary re-start in show business in April, when she shared the ice with Olympic champions Brian Boitano and Ekaterina Gordeeva and a large cast of champion figure skaters at the Mother's Day celebration sponsored by Hallmark Cards in Colorado. A portion of the live performance was televised on the CBS Network on May 3.

One of the two numbers she skated was titled "My Life," referring to "the tough times I've had in my life - I lost my mom when I was very young."

Although she's been working out in Virginia since 1998, New York City is her home base. "I live in a New York apartment; I like New York very much. I moved from Connecticut after rehab, after the tough times I had. (At 19, drinking caused her to crash her Mercedes convertible, and she spent three and a half months in rehab.)

"The Oksana Baiul collection is sold in pro shops, it's very successful," she said. She wants to take it further, hoping other stores will pick up the line.

As a story in Women's Wear Daily points out, Ms. Baiul, with an office in the Empire State Building and a fiancé wise to Seventh Avenue, is determined to maintain control of her latest business venture. An earlier licensing deal with GK, a gymnastics apparel maker, did not work out. Nowadays, she sketches the line, selects models for her catalogue, wear-tests products and goes to fashion shows.

The glossy catalogue that arrived on the "Dateline" desk a few days after our conversation shows a svelte, sophisticated Ms. Baiul in dozens of skating costumes. Most of the fashions are modeled by the green-eyed skater, blond hair pulled back in a sleek chignon or caught in a jaunty ponytail, looking demure, or coquettish, or sexy as befits the costume.

There are bare-shouldered styles and long-sleeved, high-neck fashions, with short pleated or ruffled skirts, as well as some smart warm-up jackets and pants. Though the line is geared mainly for skaters, select items such as a black catsuit with a lacy-sleeved jacket should appeal to women in general.

At 16, the petite figure skater from Ukraine took the gold at the Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. Nine years later, Oksana Baiul appears to be headed for success in two fields, as a fashion designer and a figure skater.

Another Ukrainian star?

Figure skater Sasha Cohen has been turning the heads of judges and skating fans in the past year as she keeps popping up among the top three winners in leading national and international competitions (she has won several medals this season, including Grand Prix Gold). Ms. Cohen, 18, whose birth name is Alexandra Pauline Cohen, cuts an amazingly graceful figure as she glides and turns through compulsory figures and free skating.

Media reports about her triumphs invariably mention that "Sasha's mother is Ukrainian." To check on the accuracy of this information, I contacted the U.S. Figure Skating Association, which asked me to submit three or four questions that would be relayed via e-mail to Galina Cohen, who was born in Odesa, Ukraine.

Though weeks have passed, and I queried USFSA a second time, there's been no response from Mrs. Cohen. USFSA said that Mrs. Cohen "seemed a bit frazzled at the idea of another interview." She had just returned from "a visit to Russia - where she was a very popular woman, due to her background."

I can only conclude that Galina Cohen has no wish to respond to a reporter who asked, among other things, "Is your ethnic identity Ukrainian, Russian or Jewish?"

Sasha Cohen's parents - attorney Roger Cohen and Galina Cohen - and her sister Natasha moved from California to Avon, Conn., in order to keep the family together while she's training in nearby Simsbury with coach Tatiana Tarasova.

An eye-opener art exhibit

The first art exhibition held in the newly renovated third-floor galleries of the Ukrainian Institute of America evoked compliments from many quarters, but brought gasps of surprise and lifted eyebrows in some die-hard Ukrainians. The show is an eye-opener for all visitors, both in content and in price tags.

Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky's huge canvases of surrealistic scenes and portraits, all recent works from 1999 to 2003 that range in price from $5000 to $300,000, reveal a profound talent. But the choice of blood red fabric draped extensively over podiums and the use of the same color in several of the paintings inevitably calls to mind the Soviet regime. It could be viewed as a papal red, but die-hard Ukrainians are prone to see it as Soviet-inspired.

UIA program director Walter Hoydysh corrects this view by pointing out that red is a common color in traditional Ukrainian apparel and footwear. "Think of the Kozaks' 'sharavary' and 'zhupany' and hats, of men's and women's red boots, of red sashes. Red was the color our hetmans used - it is a very common color in Ukraine."

He points out as well that Mr. Kandinsky and his art student, Vitaly Bohaievsky, who collaborated in a couple of the works, see the color as a "new" red - a red that is the color of love and happiness.

Once the proliferation of red has been digested and set aside, there is a great deal to admire and study in the 25 oils in the exhibit. A five-foot-high work titled "Eternal," a Kandinsky-Bohaievsky piece, depicts a torch topped by flames which, on further study, show a trident shape. "Kozak Yasha's Ladder" is a finely detailed traditional Ukrainian landscape centered with a black-and-white photograph, a head shot of a Kozak.

A panoramic view of the Big Apple, filled with abstract representations of Manhattan skyscrapers and landmarks, is fittingly titled "I Love New York." The painting "Lawyer" shows a white-haired, white-bearded gentleman whose kindly face and slight smile reveal honesty and benevolence.

Slashes of paint resembling deep gashes figure prominently on a simple blue-and-yellow canvas (top half blue, bottom half yellow), a Kandinsky-Bohaievsky collaboration titled "Pain of Ukraine." An abstract representation of a trident, depicted by three pointed vertical columns, is seen in the Kandinsky painting "Ukraine 4-Ever."

Other works, whose meaning or symbolism eluded this writer, include husky bears, a painting with blobs of bright primary colors against a background of spherical shapes, and a piece centered around a stream of red liquid seemingly passing in mid-air from one champagne goblet to another.

Mr. Kandinsky has a penchant for precious stones, evinced in the remarkably lifelike three-dimensional jewels that appear in many paintings (they look as though actual jewels have been glued onto the canvas), in particular "Money Tree," composed of row upon row of red stones. Two paintings titled "Malevich dedication, Red" and "Malevich dedication, Green" are simply black backgrounds centered with a gleaming red or green jewel.

The pièce de resistance, covered at the opening reception by a red cloth carrying a simple note in Ukrainian that read "A Kozak should fear nothing in this world," was finally unveiled. Above the inscription "Harmony Brings Happiness" was a triptych of large portraits of New York Mayor Bloomberg, President George Bush and former Mayor Rudy Guiliani, all three sporting red shirts under their business jackets. The work is priced at $150,000.

Mr. Kandinsky and Mr. Bohaievsky draw a parallel between the freedom-loving Kozaks of the Zaporozhian Sich, who made their home on the island of Khortytsia on the Dnipro River, and the freedom-loving people who have come from all over the world and make Manhattan Island their home.

The artists believe that the concept of Kozak courage and bravery has acquired new qualities of justice and true humanism, as expressed in the culture, politics and mentality of Manhattan.

In their opinion, the Kozaks who were able to "realize" themselves best in Manhattan are such noted artists with Ukrainian roots as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko.

Mr. Kandinsky was born in Crimea in 1960 into a family that has produced several generations of artists, inluding his great-grandfather, Wassily Kandinsky, the abstract painter and theorist generally regarded as the originator of abstract art. Following studies at the Art College in Crimea and the Ukrainian Art Academy in Kyiv, he taught briefly at the academy before opening his own studio in Crimea, where he created an experimental cultural center for progressive post-Soviet art.

He founded a studio in East Germany before coming to the United States in 1999 and now resides in New York. A multi-faceted artist who works in various art techniques, he is proud to note that his paintings are found in private collections throughout Europe and North America, including a recent addition to the gallery of England's Queen Elizabeth.

Mr. Bohaievsky, born in Kyiv in 1975, has followed his family's diplomatic assignments through the years and accompanied his parents to New York in 1996. Since his graduation from Baruch College of the City University of New York in 2000, he has held internships in financial and internet firms, worked for a major real estate firm in Manhattan, and helped establish a consulting firm in organizational psychology. He has been a private art student of Mr. Kandinsky since 2002.

Also on view at the Institute are Oleh Denysenko's finely drawn surrealistic black-and-white etchings and Marko Shuhan's immensely sized abstract oils. For information on all art exhibits, call 212-288-8660.

Abstract works in cedar

In the Chelsea area, Galerie LeLong is running an exhibit of Ursula von Rydingsvard's massive wood sculptures. "Primitive Jarring," her fourth solo exhibition at Galerie LeLong, includes four abstract works of hacked and chiseled cedar that invite touching, even caressing.

The artist explores childhood experiences and chronicles emotional attachment to one's environment and the dignity of hand labor and hand tools. Following forms which are familiar in everyday life - bowls, jars, stairs - she has created a 14-foot bowl, a colossal staircase and a multi-footed vessel with a top that opens and shuts with a weighty thud, producing a sense of restrained emotion and repetitive labor.

Her fourth work in this show is a relief sculpture "Lace Medallion," in which she integrates drawing with cedar sculpture.

She creates her sculptures from the ground up from beams of milled cedar that are clamped together before she begins battering, scoring, chiseling and gashing the whole into a shape.

Ms. von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany, in 1942 to Polish and Ukrainian parents, and spent her childhood in one refugee camp after another before the family emigrated to the United States. She often reveals her ethnic roots in the names she gives to her creations.

Exhibiting steadily since 1977, Ms. von Rydingsvard is in the front rank of contemporary American sculptors. Her pieces have been acquired by the Metropolitan, Whitney, Brooklyn and Nelson-Atkins museums, the Walker Art Center, the Storm King Art Center and Microsoft.

At the Galerie LeLong opening on May 9, the tall, lean-limbed artist greeted visitors in the milling throng in a sporty black shirt and pants and a short-cropped boyish hairdo that belied her 60 years. Her exhibition will run through June 21. (Galerie LeLong, 528 W. 26th St., 212-315-0470)

Around town

The Daytime Emmy Awards, televised live by ABC from Radio City Music Hall on May 16, saw Alex Trebek of the popular "Jeopardy" show named Outstanding Game Show Host for the third time in the past 10 years. Holding his trophy aloft, Mr. Trebek declared "This may well be the biggest surprise of the evening!" Among nominees for the award were Pat Sajak of the "Wheel of Fortune" show and "Dr. Phil." During the ceremonies, "Jeopardy" received its ninth award for Best Game Show.

Character actor John Spencer, who plays chief of staff Leo McGarry in "The West Wing," NBC's dramatic series about a fictional White House, took part in the annual AIDS Walk in New York's Central Park on May 18. Prior to the walk, he appeared in several commercials touting the event and was interviewed by Felicia Taylor on NBC on May 17.

Mr. Spencer is currently appearing in the Off Broadway play "The Exonerated," which opened at the 45 Bleecker St. Theater on May 20 and runs through June 1. Described as "thoroughly involving theater," the play is an artfully edited anthology of interviews with six death row prisoners who were all discovered to be innocent. The theater is located at 45 Bleecker Street in the West Village, (212) 253-7017.

Helen Smindak's e-mail address is [email protected].

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