The audience will be brought back to the wonderful world of romance and loftiness presented by the perennial and unique art of ballet. Soon the performance Giselle, ou Les Wilisi, featuring students of the outstanding dancer, will take place. The main part will be played by Olena Filipieva, who was handed the star baton from the wonderful performer Raisa Khylko.
Khylko belongs to the pleiad of Ukrainian ballet stars of the 1970s and 1980s, when almost every international choreographic competition was marked with the victory of a representative of the Kyivan group, whose foreign tours were always a triumph. They enjoyed the praise of both the audience and the critics, who revealed to the world a brilliant classical school based on the amazingly harmonious combination of perfect classical conceptualization and ancient Ukrainian folk melodies and dances.
In 1978 Khylko was among the first dancers to bring home a golden medal from the Varna International Ballet Competition. Her first decade on the ballet stage was bright and full of achievements. It was crowned with many wonderful choreographic images, marked with high technical prowess and a deep immersion into the poetic-romantic essence of classical ballet. By that time Khylko had played the parts of Odette/Odile, Aurora, Klara, Nykia, Raymonda. But the part of Giselle held a specific place in her career: it was an example of ballet romanticism, and stood out in the world of choreography. Few performers of this role succeeded in bringing to life this synthesis of perfect technique and immersion. When Alicia Alonso saw Khylko’s Giselle during a tour by Kyiv’s ballet company, she said, “I have seen many famous dancers performing this part. But I must say, this is the world’s best Giselle.”
Raisa Khylko was almost an accomplished ballet dancer as she graduated from the Kyiv School of Choreography. She was taught by renowned ballerina Natalia Verekundova, Agrippina Vaganova’s student, who managed not only to teach her academic dance, but also develop artistry, gracefulness, and harmony in her, as well as the sense of arabesque as a performing base for future classical roles. She passed on to her by far the most important thing in the complicated art of dancing, to reveal the inner world of the character via inner feeling, merging dance with the dramaturgy of music.
Khylko was one of the most musical ballerinas of her time — the images created by her revealed the essence of the accompanying music. It is not accidental that the ballerina was called the first violin of the performance. Her grateful admirers continue to recall with delight how she performed the parts of Nykia and Sylphide, unforgettable in terms of the depth of poetic revelation of the forest fairies’ characters. At the same time she skillfully revealed the characters inner functioning, like with Maria in The Fountain of Bakhchysarai, Olga in the eponymous ballet, Shirien and Mekhmene-Banu in the Legend of Love, the Witch in the production of Chekhov’s work to the accompaniment of George Gershwin’s music. Most renowned Ukrainian and foreign ballet masters eagerly worked with her: Robert Kliavin, Heorhii Kovtun, Anatolii Shekera, Valerii Kovtun. Mai Murdmaa staged her wonderful modern-classical ballet suite Daphnis and Chloe specifically because of Khylko. The outstanding Estonian choreographer said after the performance, “Raisa Khylko is a big shot performer. She has a rare sense of style, both in music and choreography, she feels the most subtle nuances of plastic symbolism.”
Khylko was incomparable in concert programs, where she brilliantly performed not only adagios from classical performances in her repertoire, but also choreographic pieces and miniatures, mostly created by choreographers to fit the performing style of prima ballerina: Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saens, Walpurgis Night by Charles Gounod, and Sinatra Suite.
August 21 marked Khylko’s anniversary. Today she continues her creative work as a teacher, which she is doing in a same successful and brilliant way. The great ballet dancer’s pupils continue to uphold her legacy with their successes and achievements. She teaches them the most important thing: to serve the scene, art, and the most demanding critic — the audience.
THE DAY’s FACT FILE
Raisa KHYLKO is a prima ballerina, pedagogue, and Ukraine’s People Artist. She was born on September 21, 1950, in Dnipropetrovsk. She graduated from the Kyiv School of Choreography. In the period between 1968 and 1993 she has worked as a soloist at the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet (today it is the National Opera of Ukraine). She has brilliantly performed the parts of Raymonda (Alexander Glazunov’s ballet under the same title), Aurora and Odile/Odette (The Sleeping Beauty and Swan’s Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky), Aegina (Spartacus by Khachaturian) etc.
In 1984 she graduated from the department of choreography at the Moscow Theater Institute.
She has performed in Japan, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, France, Germany, Egypt etc. She is the winner of the International Ballet Competition in Varna (1978).
