Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Chicago's Joffrey Ballet Faces Backlash Over Russian Ballet Programming
www.broadwayworld.com: In March 2022, The Joffrey Ballet announced their 2022/2023 season, which included Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, choreographed by Russia's Yuri Possokov. The production is scheduled to run from February 15th through 26th, 2023.
1 comment:
Carolyn Burback
said...
Being neither Ukrainian nor Russian I don’t think I have much weight in saying what is right of the Ana Karenina ballet to perform or to not perform because of the Russian backdrop. The war in Ukraine is devastating to keep up with and I agree that positively promoting Russia is not good at the moment considering it is important to inform people of what is happening in stead of carrying on as if Russia has no controversy around it. However to play devil's advocate I can see why proponents of the ballet may support the continuation of it’s run because not only did people probably put a lot of a work into making it come to fruition, but it’s not like Leo Tolstoy who wrote it was anti-Ukraine, or that every Russian and their culture is anti-Ukraine and shouldn’t be distributed. I do see how promoting Russian Culture in a romantic and grandiose tale such as Anna Karenina is offensive to the Ukrainian side of the war who probably doesn’t want to see a Russian story being beautifully displayed at this time though. Yet on the other hand there are plenty of other wars that have been going on for far longer than the Russian Ukraine war that we as Americans in particular actively ignore despite some being of greater scale and of human consequence but we don’t see an outcry every time a show promoting the culture of one of the offending countries being put on display.
1 comment:
Being neither Ukrainian nor Russian I don’t think I have much weight in saying what is right of the Ana Karenina ballet to perform or to not perform because of the Russian backdrop. The war in Ukraine is devastating to keep up with and I agree that positively promoting Russia is not good at the moment considering it is important to inform people of what is happening in stead of carrying on as if Russia has no controversy around it. However to play devil's advocate I can see why proponents of the ballet may support the continuation of it’s run because not only did people probably put a lot of a work into making it come to fruition, but it’s not like Leo Tolstoy who wrote it was anti-Ukraine, or that every Russian and their culture is anti-Ukraine and shouldn’t be distributed. I do see how promoting Russian Culture in a romantic and grandiose tale such as Anna Karenina is offensive to the Ukrainian side of the war who probably doesn’t want to see a Russian story being beautifully displayed at this time though. Yet on the other hand there are plenty of other wars that have been going on for far longer than the Russian Ukraine war that we as Americans in particular actively ignore despite some being of greater scale and of human consequence but we don’t see an outcry every time a show promoting the culture of one of the offending countries being put on display.
Post a Comment