This year’s French Spring will go on for the 14th time in Ukraine. Viewers of nine cities – Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Lviv, Odesa, Rivne, Kharkiv, and the recently added Berdychiv and Ivano-Frankivsk – will be enjoying the colorful action.
“Every year we try to surprise the Ukrainian public with street performances that can gather several thousand people,” Pascal SLIWANSKI, councilor for Culture and Cooperation of the French Embassy in Ukraine, said at a press conference, as quoted by Ukrinform. “The French Spring 2017 is going to open on April 1 at Sophia Square with a street circus performance Galileo. It was developed by a French company Deus Ex Machina, using mechanical devices for circus tricks, in which actors will tell about the solar system and defy the laws of gravity.”
According to the organizers of the event, when the dusk comes a huge sphere will start swaying in the sky, set in motion by aerial acrobats who will perform incredible stunts, ignoring the laws of mass and gravity. In its movement the sphere will rise to the stars... And then a voice is heard. This is the actor who plays the role of Galileo – Italian astronomer of the 17th century. He will tell the story of his discovery – heliocentric theory, according to which the sun is the center of a system, and the planets, including Earth, are revolving around it. According to the director, the sphere will symbolize the sky, and acrobats are going to be the stars...
The show is very entertaining. The troupe that presents the Galileo performance – Compagnie Deus ex machina – is a creative team that specializes in creating street performances for adults and children, incorporating elements of circus performance, pyrotechnics, and aerial structures.
Incidentally, the forum will close on April 29 with another street performance – The Unusual Transport. It will be shown near the Arch of Friendship of Peoples. It will be a modern variation on Beauty and the Beast, embodied by the duet of a dancer and... a machine-excavator.
Executive Director of the French Institute in Kyiv Matthieu Ardin reported on a cinema program that would include a Festival of prerelease shows for recent films. They will be screened in French with Ukrainian subtitles. “The Long Night of French Shorts” will be composed of 24 films and will last six hours; this year, it will travel to 17 Ukrainian cities. A retrospective of movies under the theme “Love Forever” will be held in all nine festival cities.
In April, amateurs of French culture will be offered opportunities to visit Jazz concerts, exhibitions, and two theaters of French-Ukrainian co-production that have caused a discussion among the critics: the play Antigone and the ballet with hip-hop elements Motion.
Antigone was already shown at Gogolfest-2015. Based on texts by Sophocles and the interpretation of his work by Bertolt Brecht, director Lucy Berelovich created a story that has a very modern feel to it. The play employs mainly Ukrainian actors: Antigone was played by Ruslana Khazipova of Dakh Daughters. The only Frenchman in the cast was Thibault Lacroix; he played the leading male role: soothsayer Tiresias.
The composer for the production is a Frenchman – Sylvain Jacques, but the music for the choir (which, incidentally, includes other members of the freak-cabaret Dakh Daughters) was written by our compatriots: Dakh Daughters and their leader Vladyslav Troitskyi.
Motion is directed by Brahim Bouchelaghem. The ballet was first presented in early February at the National Operetta. The scene resembles a clean sheet: as if the square 8 by 8 meters is a blank screen on which old footage changes. The dance space is a place for creativity and choreography, where the 13 artists write their own story...
