NATALIYA MIROSHNYK
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CUPERTINO, CA – Many NUTCRACKER ballets are being performed in December in the Bay Area, and the reason is that the PYOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKI’s ballet, choreographed by MARIUS PETIPA and LEV IVANOV with a Libretto adapted from F.T.A. HOFFMANN’s story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” is a must-do for many ballet companies. It is paradoxical, because when the original NUTCRACKER premiered at the Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia in l892, the ballet, was not liked. At the time, the only music from the ballet that people liked was its “Suite.” And because of its Suite, many years later the ballet companies began performing it all around the world, and since l960, making it an American Christmas tradition in the United States. On December 14, those living in Silicon Valley, will have the opportunity to see not another NUTCRACKER, but the GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRAKER, which is one of the world’s most fabulous presentations of the ballet, danced by the dancers of MOSCOW BALLET. This unique presentation at the Flint Center in Cupertino, will include dancer NATALIYA MIROSHNYK. dancing the flamboyant Spanish variation in Act II, and the on-stage performances of young ballet dancers from Cupertino’s dancing schools. The reason why the GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER presentation will include local children, is that NATALIYA MIROSHNYK, a graduate dancer from the Kiev Academic Choreographic School in the Ukraine, and a world-known former dancer of the Ukrainian Odessa State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, is much more than an accomplished ballerina. NATALIYA is also the “Audition Director” of the MOSCOW BALLET, which is the person that Russia sends to the United States and Canada every year, to audition and rehearse young ballet dancers from those countries, to perform alongside the professional dancers from the MOSCOW BALLET, when the MOSCOW BALLET performs in their country or in their State. In October, NATALIYA came to the South Bay to audition young ballet dancers from Cupertino, and spent a week there training the Cupertino’s dancing teachers to teach their ballet students the dances they will be performing in the GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER on the day the MOSCOW BALLET dances at the Flint Center. While in Cupertino, CULTURAL WORLD BILINGUAL had a chance to talk with NATALIYA who told us: N.M “As Audition Director, my job is to go through all the United States and Canada auditioning children and training them. I have a schedule indicating where I have to go first and where I have to go next. I stay one week in every place and then I move to the next place. On this tour, and before coming here, I stayed one week in Santa Rosa, will stay a week in Cupertino, and from here I am going to San Diego. One has to move in this job very quickly.” CWB ¿How old are the ballet dancers that you are training? N.M."The ballet has lots of parts for children from 7 to 17 years old. We have lots of parts for The Snowflakes which are to be danced by the little ones, and we also have lots of parts for the Mice, which are played by children l0 to 12 years old. We also have the Fairy parts for that age, and the parts for the butterflies ." CWB: In selecting your dancers, what type of dancers do you chose? N.M. “I take any child, but first I need to audition him or her first. During the audition, I mostly observe their “potential” for learning, because at the end, it is really their local dance teachers who train them. For example the teachers in Cupertino are the ones who are going to be training the children from Cupertino to dance with the MOSCOW ballet when it comes to the Flint Center."
NATALIYA third from R with four Cupertino Children “This arrangement from the MOSCOW ballet is wonderful because each time it tours the United States or Canada it gives young American ballet dancers an opportunity to dance with them." “These young dancers have lots of fun during rehearsals. The MOSCOW BALLET has beautiful costumes, and they get to wear them It also gives these young dancers the opportunity to learn the discipline require from dancers, they learn how dances are choreographed, but most important they are given the opportunity to dance, on the same stage, with the professional dancers from the MOSCOW BALLET.”
Last October at Los Gatos High School, NATALIYA as part of the program “DANCE WITH US,” selected 60 Children from Cupertino to participate in this year’s GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER. The GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER is the dramatization of the traditional story in which Masha, (as the girl is called in Russian) meets her prince. Each year while on tour, the MOSCOW BALLET presents the story with fabulous different ballets, and this year will be no exception when the MOSCOW BALLETS present “The Dove of Peace,” a magnificent pas de deux in which the two dancers do a “fish,” forming which their bodies a bird with a 20 foot wingspan. This bird will be the dove that will escort Masha and her prince to the “Land of Peace and Harmony.” NATALIYA adds that the “DANCE WITH US,” as the program is called, is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity for aspiring ballet dancers to perform in the same stage with the professional world-renown dancers from the MOSCOW BALLET. The GREAT RUSSIAN NUTCRACKER will be presented at the FLINT Center in Cupertino on Saturday, December 14 at 3:00 P.M. |