War in Ukraine. “If I don’t dance, I don’t feel human anymore.” Martin, a young dancer from kyiv welcomed to Monaco
Four young Ukrainian dancers joined the Princess Grace Academy, school of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. This is one of the actions of the Ballets de la Principalité which undertake, with their means, to support the Ukrainian people who are victims of the war.
Martin Kovol, 17, speaks in still hesitant English.
February 24 was the worst day of my life.
The young 17-year-old boy left in a few hours his life, his family, his friends and his future all traced within the dance school of kyiv.
“That morning my parents who live in Kharkiv called me and said: “The war has begun”. I gathered clothes and shoes, and I left”.
This story, which one of the dancers of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo learned from her family in Ukraine, moved Jean-Christophe Maillot. The director-choreographer of the company has decided to welcome the young boy to the Princess Grace Academy.
“The first week was very difficult for me. My parents are in Kharkiv near the Russian border, the situation there is very difficult. I want to believe that everything is fine.” Despite the concern, Martin has found a form of balance here: “Dancing is in my blood. If I don’t dance for a week, I don’t feel human anymore. Here I can improve my body, then I want to go back to Kyiv”.
Like him, three other young Ukrainian dancers, a boy and two girls, have put their suitcases on the Rock, boarding at the academy. Young people welcomed by solidarity rather than by charity, because all have the necessary potential to acquire, with work, the level of school.
Alisa Garkavenko is also 17 years old. If she started dancing in kyiv, she then continued her apprenticeship in Russia in Saint Petersburg, which she left in disaster at the start of the war.
“It’s an honor to be a student in this academy. Although I’m worried about my family. I hope my mother and my brothers will try to leave the country, because it’s impossible to stay here. , everyone helped us. Not just the teachers, the students too, they put us up, and were very kind to us.”
It is very important that we can, at our level, show this solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are suffering the onslaught of this unbearable war declared by Russia.
Jean-Christophe Maillot, director-choreographer of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Jean-Christophe Maillot, the director of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, of which thePrincess Grace Academycommitted without hesitation to help the Ukrainians. Despite, or perhaps precisely because of, the long common history that links the Monegasque company to Russia, and in particular to the Bolshoi Theatre.
“I have a strong relationship with these Russian dancers, and especially with Olga Smirnova who had the courage to leave the Bolshoiand who will come and dance with us soon”emphasizes Jean-Christophe Maillot. “I know that it’s not easy to take a stand there, that it’s not easy to say that we are against this war, in a country where freedom of speech is not at all the same. than with us.”
He who has the opportunity to do so, has therefore taken a clear position. As a choreographer, Jean-Christophe Maillot withdrew from the Bolshoi the right to present The Taming of the Shrewballet he created especially for the Russian company in 2014 and which is still part of his repertoire.
The Ballets de Monte-Carlo did not stop at this symbolic action. This Monday, a company truck had just returned from the Ukrainian border. He delivered basic necessities on site, donated by the dancers themselves.
The tour in St. Petersburg has been canceled. The departure for Saint Petersburg was scheduled for Tuesday.
“The tragedy is that Russia had opened up a lot, after having been very closed for years, to the West and to international culture”.
In accordance with the Principality’s wish for all Monegasque cultural structures, the recipe for first performance by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo in April will go entirely to the aid of the Ukrainians, via the Red Cross.