Modernism in Kyiv : Jubilant Experimentation

Acknowledgments ix
Permissions xi
List of Illustrations xiii
A Note on Transliteration xxiii
Introduction: Reconnecting Modernisms 3

PART ONE KYIV: ‘SPECIAL AND BEWILDERING’ 13
Les Kurbas Foreword to Victor Auburtin, Art Is Dying (excerpt) 15
1 Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation (Irena R. Makaryk) 16 

Serhy Yefremov ‘How beautiful Kyiv is’ (diary excerpt) 25
2 ‘A Theatrical Mecca’: The Stages of Kyiv in 1907 (Mayhill C. Fowler) 26

Pavlo Tychyna ‘Dawn’ 51
3 ‘Special and Bewildering’: A Portrait of Late-Imperial and Early Soviet Kyiv (Michael F. Hamm) 52

Legend Sweet Michael and the Golden Gates 97
4 Three Novels, Three Cities (Taras Koznarsky)98

Tsar Nicholas II and Lev Trotsky On Film 138
5 Film in Kyiv, 1910–1916 (Oleh Sydor-Hybelynda) 139

PART 2 KYIV THE EPICENTRE 167
Les Kurbas On Rhythm (diary excerpt) 169
6 In the Epicentre of Abstraction: Kyiv during the Time of Kurbas (Dmytro Horbachov) 170

Volodymyr Koriak ‘To the Isles Electric!’ (excerpt) 196
7 The Yiddish Kultur-Lige (Gennady Estraikh) 197

Pavlo Tychyna ‘You Tell Me’ 218
8 Politics and the Ukrainian Avant-garde 219
Myroslav Shkandrij

Les Kurbas On Art (diary excerpt) 242
9 Kyiv’s Multicultural Theatrical Life, 1917–1926 (Hanna Veselovska) 243

PART 3 ‘FIRE AND MOTION’ 275
Pavlo Tychyna ‘In the Orchestra of the Cosmos’ (excerpt) 277
10 Towards a New Vision of Theatre: Les Kurbas’s Work at the Young Theatre in Kyiv (Virlana Tkacz) 278

Serge Lifar On Movement (excerpt) 310
11 The Choreographic Avant-garde in Kyiv, 1916–1921: Bronislava Nijinska and Her École de Mouvement (Maria Ratanova) 311

Pavlo Tychyna ‘The Highest Power’ 321
12 Kyiv, the 1920s, and Modernism in Music (Dagmara Turchyn-Duvirak) 322

Pavlo Tychyna ‘Lull’ (excerpt) 342
13 Music in the Theatre of Les Kurbas (Yana Leonenko) 343

PART 4 THE INVISIBLE MADE VISIBLE 359
Bronislava Nijinska On the Theatre (notebook excerpt) 361
14 Les Kurbas’s Early Work at the Berezil: From Bodies in Motion to Performing the Invisible (Virlana Tkacz) 362

Vladimir Lenin ‘Why worship the new?’ 386
15 Abstraction and Ukrainian Futurist Literature (Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj) 387

Klyment Redko In sight of the sun (autobiography excerpt) 407
16 The Graphic Arts: From Page Design to Theatre (Myroslava M. Mudrak) 408

Pavlo Tychyna ‘Rhythm’ 442
17 Dissecting Time/Space: The Scottish Play and the New Technology of Film (Irena R. Makaryk) 443

Natalka Bilotserkivets ‘We’ll not die in Paris’ (excerpt) 478
18 On the World Stage: The Berezil in Paris and New York (Irena R. Makaryk) 479

PART 5 ELEGIES: REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE PAST 515

Serhiy Zhadan ‘The End of Ukrainian Syllabotonic Verse’ 517
19 Vsevolod Meyerhold and Les Kurbas (Béatrice Picon-Vallin with Veronika Gopko-Pereverzeva) 519

Pericles ‘Funeral Oration over the Athenian Dead’ (excerpt) 537
20 Les Kurbas and the Spiritual Foundations of the Ukrainian Avant-garde (Nelli Kornienko) 538

Les Kurbas ‘Premonition’ (excerpt) 567

Appendices
1 Production List 569
2 Kyiv, Historical Timeline 583
Contributors 589
Index 593