EDITORIAL: Promoting Ukraine through the arts (01/09/05)

EDITORIAL

Promoting Ukraine through the arts

Frankly, this editorial was to be written nearly two months ago, right about the time of the first run-off in Ukraine's presidential election. Well, dear readers, you all know what topic has occupied this space since then...

Nonetheless, the topic that was to be discussed back in November remains important. It has to do with promoting Ukraine through the arts, and specifically via the country's premiere dance ensemble, the Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company, which received wonderful reviews for its performances during the fall throughout the U.S. and in several Canadian cities. Readers may recall that we had no success in securing an advertisement that would list all the dates and venues of its performances so that our readers would know to search for details in their local media. The tour organizer, New York-based Columbia Artists Management LLC, saw no reason to advertise the complete tour and left it up to local venues to promote Virsky performances.

Since then it became clear that Columbia was guilty of an even greater faux pas.

We refer to the program information prepared by Columbia Artists Management that was distributed to all Virsky venues for publication. At first we, and others, suspected that local organizers were responsible for the ghastly errors in the text - everything from identifying dances and customs as Russian, to poor translations (e.g., State T. Shevchenko Premium instead of Taras Shevchenko State Prize), incorrect transliterations (Gutsulschyna), misspellings (we've never seen so many variations - in a single text - of the spelling for Carpathian and Zakarpattia ...) and even horribly deficient English! We could go on and on citing the examples, but our space here is limited.

Later it became clear that this was a tour-wide problem, as several readers sent us copies of the Virsky programs distributed in their cities. Seeking an explanation, we called Columbia Artists Management, but the company did not return our repeated phone calls over the span of several weeks, despite initial assurances from a representative that it would.

The Ukrainian Weekly first became aware of the errors in the Virsky text thanks to The Community Theatre of Morristown, N.J., whose marketing director, Daniel Grossman (no relation to the Andrew Grossman listed on the program as the Virsky tour producer), contacted us to consult about what he had heard were some errors in the text. He sent over a copy for our perusal and asked for input. Our advice was pure and simple: trash the whole text and re-do it. Nothing else could save it. Amazingly, The Community Theatre did just that - it printed up a corrected insert to the full-color program book that had been prepared well in advance of the show.

Kudos and huge thanks are due to Dan Grossman and The Community Theatre for caring to present accurate information and for respecting their audience. Columbia Artists Management, on the other hand, deserves nothing but disdain; it should be ashamed of such sloppy, ignorant and offensive work.

But the blame does not end there. The Virsky company, after all, must have some control over how it is marketed, and Ukraine's government also must have a say since Virsky performances were billed as an "Official Tour of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Ukraine."

Hopefully, with the bad experience of this tour behind them, they can do better to promote our beautiful and unique Ukrainian culture.

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