The world of dance unites in an emotional gala for Ukraine in London

United to send a message against the “heinous” war in Ukraine, renowned international dancers, from Russia to Argentina, passing through Japan, France and Cuba, thrilled the London public on Saturday at a grand fundraising gala.

“Tonight we are here for democracy, to defend freedom and human values,” said visibly moved Romanian dancer Alina Cojocaru, co-organizer of the event that raised 140,000 pounds ($185,000, 167,000 euros).

Dancers and musicians donated their work and the money will go to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), a platform formed by the British Red Cross and 14 other humanitarian NGOs, to help the victims of the war.

“Please, don’t stop supporting us,” asked the other architect of the evening, the Ukrainian ex-dancer Ivan Putrov, to the crowd that packed the London Coliseum and stood up to listen to his country’s anthem sung by the Ukrainian contralto Ksenia Nikolaieva with the choir of the English National Opera.

Great stars such as the Russian Natalia Osipova, the Argentine Marianela Núñez and the Japanese Fumi Kaneko of the Royal Ballet then took the stage. Also the Ukrainian Katja Khaniukova, the Spanish Aitor Arrieta and the American Emma Hawes of the English National Ballet, among others.

They performed 13 short choreographies, from the jovial and acrobatic classicism of Marius Petipa’s “The Corsair” to the furiously contemporary dance of Wayne McGregor in “FAR”, passing through the heartbreaking intimacy of Gyula Pandi on “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s requiem.

“As artists, we have talent and we must use it to say what we believe. Art has a voice and that is the voice we use,” Putrov, who was a principal dancer with London’s prestigious Royal Ballet from 2002 to 2010, told AFP.

Since then becoming a producer and seeing his country torn by war, he decided together with Cojocaru to mobilize the world of ballet in this “humanitarian appeal”.

Two weeks later they had assembled an exceptional squad to “raise funds that will save lives” and “send a message, not only to the West (…) but to the Russians, some of whom will hear us and raise their voices” because ” what is happening is appalling,” he says.

The gala culminated with the 23 dancers solemnly ecstatic on stage, joined by hands, while the sound of “The Triumph of Love” written by Russian composer Alexander Glazunov for “Raymonda”.

Music by Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, among other creators, was also played during the evening, because “Russian culture has nothing to do with Putin and Putin has nothing to do with Russian culture,” Putrov stressed.

Likewise, the presence of Osipova, who declined to give interviews but received a loud and emotional ovation from the public, “demonstrates that Russia is not the equivalent of aggression,” the Ukrainian considered.

Among the dancers present, the Cuban Javier Torres, from the Northern Ballet of Leeds, in the north of England, performed a powerful masculine version of “The Death of a Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Created by the French choreographer Michel Descombey who lived in Mexico and died, Torres had performed it profusely during the ten years that he was a member of the Cuban national ballet before coming to the United Kingdom, where he has worked since 2010.

The piece shows a paraplegic who loses one of his limbs and “represents fighting for what you have lost,” he explained to AFP.

“It talks about fighting to the end and that’s how I wanted to interpret it,” he said, thinking of “people who try to resist what happens to them,” like the Ukrainians mired in war or the Cubans mired in decades of suffering due to sanctions and embargo. American and “even by the Russians” in Soviet times.

“I have that pain, I have that anguish that every Cuban who lives outside of Cuba has, because we know the needs that are experienced there,” he says.

Although he says he has never mixed art with politics, participating in this gala was for him “a humanitarian duty as a dancer, as a defender of human rights, first as a person and then as an artist.”

acc/dbh

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