Lesia Ukrainka's Works on the Domestic Ballet Scene

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to reproduce a complete panorama of Lesia Ukrainka's creations on the domestic ballet stage and to reveal the peculiarities of such ballets. The research methodology is based on the methods of generalization, comparison, and systematization, with the use of a chronological approach, which made it possible to reveal a panorama of ballet masters' appeals to Lesia Ukrainka's works in historical retrospect. Scientific novelty. For the first time, a complete panorama of Lesia Ukrainka's works, interpreted by means of choreographic art on the domestic ballet stage, has been reproduced, and the specifics of the interaction between such works and ballet have been revealed. Conclusions. Lesia Ukrainka's creativity was close to the nature of the ballet theater in its poetic and ephemeral image structure, philosophical generalizations. The success of ballet interpretations often depended on how closely the ballet master imitated the dramatic structure of the works, but did not resort to illustrating or directly translating literary language into choreographic vocabulary, how creatively he interpreted the poetics of the word in choreographic images. Among the works of Lesia Ukrainka, the drama extravaganza "Forest Song" by M. Skorulskyi, first staged by S. Serhieiev in 1946, became the most popular for ballet interpretations. Despite the number of ballet masters' appeals (N. Skorulska, Ye. Khasianova, M. Trehubov, A. Pantykin, V. Kovtun, V. Lytvynov etc.), consider V. Vronskyi 's production of 1958 to be the best interpretation due to its masterful approach to the ideological and philosophical content of Lesia Ukrainka's work, its compositional and architectural integrity, the symphonization of the choreography, and the psychological persuasiveness of the images. Less popular, but quite significant for the progress of the Ukrainian ballet theater, were the performances "Lights of the Night" by L. Dychko (1967) and "The Master of the Fireplace" by V. Hubarenko (1969) (the first – based on the poem of the same name and the second – based on the drama of the same name by Lesia Ukrainka; both first staged by A. Shekera).

Key words: Ukrainian ballet, Lesia Ukrainka and ballet, choreography, dance