Tired of the classics? As the principal dancer of the Kyiv Ballet, Evhen Lagunov, recalls, “no, because you always find something new, be it in the music, in the dance, or in the story itself”. He says it, that throughout his 24 seasons of dancing he will have played Siegfried from Swan Lake, the ballet by Marius Petipa with music by Tchaikovsky, on more than a thousand occasions.
Tonight Swan Lake returns to Tivoli, where it will stay until July 23 to kick off the company's summer tour that will take them to Madrid, Palma and Valencia for five weeks, and will later continue around the Peninsula interspersing two more productions including The Privateer –another classic choreography by Marius Petipa–, as well as The Nutcracker. The tour has a certain charitable nature, since two euros of each ticket sold will go to the Red Cross for the care of Ukrainian refugees.
The company, which has been rehearsing for ten days in Alicante, is made up mostly of Ukrainians, but not all of them came directly from their country. Lagunov, for example, was born in Donetsk and lived for a few years in Kyiv, but since before the war he has lived –when he is not on tour– in Budapest, which does not mean that the war is far away: “We wake up every day with a start waiting not find a tragic message on the phone, and the first thing we do is read the news”. The first dancer also assures that for many of his classmates who come directly from Ukraine, being away from the war is a relief, but even so, “they wake up every morning at 3 and 5 because that is when the siren usually sounds. Here they are calm, but the restlessness is still there ”. The war always present even in the absence.
In fact, male company members residing in Ukraine have to ask for permission to travel, which sometimes affects schedules. Viktor Ishchuk, founder of the ballet in 2017 and who maintains his headquarters at the International Center for Culture and Art in the Ukrainian capital, has not been able to make it to the premiere of the tour, although he is expected to arrive in a few days.
Lagunov is aware of somehow representing his country, but more than pressure what he feels is “responsibility. Every time you go on stage you feel it, in front of the audience and in front of yourself”. After so many years feeling it, he confesses that it is not easy for him to dance the same thing over and over again, “not so much because of the physical part, but because morally this is a character that demands a lot”.
The eternal fight of good against evil, with Prince Siegfried in love with Odette, bewitched into a swan by a curse. Lagunov recalls that originally it was a much longer show, about six hours, which has been adapted to current sensibilities, not only shortening it but also in terms of the plot: before, everyone died, whereas in many of the current productions It is not like this: "As there are too many problems in the world, we need good to win."
Last year 98,000 people saw the kyiv Ballet on its tour of Spain and Portugal, a figure that contributed to the donation of 140,000 euros to the Red Cross.
