St. Petersburg
International
Economic Forum
http://forumspb.com/
June 20–22, 2013
Business regatta as part of the cultural programme of the
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
http://forumspb.com/sections/21/materials/193
The Russian Yachting Federation and the St. Petersburg
International Economic Forum invite you to take part in a regatta with
world-class professional yachtsmen. The programme of the regatta traditionally
includes a breathtaking race, a reception on a yacht, and an awards ceremony.
Classical music concert in palace square for forum
participants and members of the public featuring IL Divo accompanied by a
symphony orchestra Special guest: Div4s
The classical music concert will be held in St. Petersburg’s
main square in the very heart of the city, and feature the music group Il Divo
(the international operatic pop vocal group quartet was named the most
successful multinational pop group by the Guinness Book of Records) and Div4s
(an Italian ensemble comprised of four sopranos who perform crossover songs)
accompanied by the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra.
Mariinsky Theatre
Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.
Opera buffa in four acts.
The St. Petersburg Shostakovich academic philharmonic (Grand
hall)
An evening of organ music: 'Together at the Organ'. Duet –
Ulrich Meldau and Barbara Meldau (Switzerland). Programme: Bach,
Mozart, Merkel, Brahms, Duruflé, Bossi, Saint-Saёns, Langlais.
VIII 'Musical Collection' International Festival
Mikhailovsky Theatre
Tchaikovsky's Swan
Lake (ballet
Manuscript treasures of the East on the banks of the Neva
The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute
of Oriental Manuscripts boasts Russia’s largest collection of manuscripts from
the East, one of the most valuable collections in Europe.
The exhibition will showcase its exceptional collection of Arabic, Japanese,
Chinese, and Indian manuscript treasures, as well as ancient examples of Arabic
writing, Persian and Mongolian miniatures, and Sanskrit manuscripts from
various eras.
The Art of Therapy
http://www.sptimesrussia.com/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=37489
American art therapist Irina Derkacheva brings a project to
help kids cope in St. Petersburg.
Irina Derkacheva, an American art therapist of Ukrainian
origin, is in St. Petersburg
this week to conduct art therapy sessions with underprivileged children. Using
stop-motion animation, Derkacheva hopes her pilot project will not only help a
number of children overcome their problems but will also raise awareness of art
therapy in Russia.
Derkacheva, 35, crowd-sourced the funding for the project in
Russia
and said that she wanted to share her experience in this field with the country
that she was connected to in her childhood.
Here in the city for two weeks, the energetic art therapist
is running two sessions a day at a summer camp at one of the city’s schools.
Each session has 11 Russian children grouped together by age. In these
sessions, the children, as a group, create a stop-motion animation film. First
they make clay figures of cartoon characters and then develop a plot for the
film. To then create stop-motion animation, they take photographs of the clay
figures after making incrementally small changes to them. When the frames are
viewed in quick succession, the effect of movement is created, thus creating a
film.
“Art therapy has a number of goals, such as helping children
or adults who are experiencing certain psychological difficulties to express
themselves non-verbally, to work together, to give them an opportunity to
communicate in a manner they’re comfortable with,” Derkacheva said.
According to Derkacheva, art therapy can be used with a
variety of people, but there are certain personalities, both children and
adults, who gain the most benefit from it. With children, it’s those with
behavioral problems, who have difficulty in finding common ground with others
or may be lacking the attention from parents.
In contrast to regular art studio classes, where
participants are usually left to their own devices to explore and learn art,
art therapy sessions should be conducted by trained therapists. This is because
art therapists understand their client’s needs and can help them to develop new
communications skills and modulate certain negative tendencies all while having
them engaged in a creative activity.
“For example, one of the children in my St. Petersburg group seems to be answering
any initiative with a ‘no’ reaction. He refused to join the group at first.
However, we found a way to engage him and now have him trying to develop
positive attitudes to new activities,” Derkacheva said.
Here in St.
Petersburg, Derkacheva works with children starting
from seven years old, up and to 13 years old. A number of these children come
from families that lack time to give individual attention to their children,
all for various reasons.
“Of course, we must understand that art therapy alone won’t
become a complete solution to the problems of those children. However, these
sessions give a huge boost to their self-esteem and confidence. The major
lesson I want to impart upon them is to never give up!” Derkacheva said.
Before coming to Russia,
Derkacheva practiced a similar art therapy program in New York. Some of the participants were
students from a specialized school for children with developmental disabilities
such as autism or Down syndrome.
Irina Derkacheva
Participants
developing animated characters for the project.
“It would be unrealistic to expect that after participating
in a short-term art therapy project, children with such problems as these would
be able to overcome all their difficulties. However, we have seen several
positive changes in behavior, such as an improved ability to work and stay in a
group among students with autistic spectrum disorders,” she said.
Derkacheva co-leads the group in Russia with two Russian specialists
from the Center for Medical, Psychological and Social Assistance in the city’s
Kirovsky district, and hopes she will pass her experience to those experts and
later to many others if she finds more funding for the project.
“It’s a pilot project and I’d like to get funding to develop
a long-term program. I strongly believe that cooperation between Russian and
American therapists would benefit both sides,” Derkacheva said.
Oksana Kamakina, one of the psychologists from the center
who is assisting Derkacheva, said the art therapy method they are now using
might become an effective way to solve the various psychological problems
children have.
“On one hand, this method immediately motivates children to
take part in the activity since it teaches them something new and modern,
ultimately connected to the computer world that most of them are now so fond of
and they can watch a cartoon they’ve made together on a computer screen. On the
other hand, it’s pure psychological training where they learn how to cooperate
with each other, consider the opinions of other people and ultimately achieve a
common result,” Kamakina said.
She added that she and her peers are most likely to use the
methods they are now learning in their future professional activities.
According to Derkacheva, Russian art therapists are very
interested in developing collaborative projects with their colleagues from
other countries, adding that Alexander Kopytin, the President of the Russian
Art Therapy Association, was instrumental in connecting her with Russian
colleagues.
Musical Survives New Ban Attempt
http://www.sptimesrussia.com/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=37490
The world-famous 1970s musical, “Jesus Christ — Superstar”
has survived a public outcry from religious groups in the southern city of Stavropol. The show is to
go ahead on June 20, while its cancellation in the nearby city of Pyatigorsk remains firmly
in place.
The director of the Stavropol Drama Theater, Yevgeny
Lugansk, made a formal decision not to withdraw the performance devised by
members of the St. Petersburg Rock Opera Theater.
“What right do I have to cancel someone else’s performance,
which has already been approved by art councils?” Lugansk questioned RIA
Novosti on Tuesday.
“Secondly, I do not want to pass for a narrow-minded man who
made such an unfair decision,” he said.
Social activists had torn down posters promoting the
performance and had even started collecting signatures hoping to submit a
petition for its cancellation, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Disgruntled religious groups had the backing of some local
officials. Regional deputy Aiydin Shirinov had earlier voiced his support for
the protesters, stating Monday: “I myself have not seen this opera, but if my
constituents are worried and protest against it, I would support that,” RIA
Novosti reported.
The controversy even instigated a request from the local
Ministry of Culture, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
The 1970s rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice is
based on the final weeks of Jesus’ life, and places a strong emphasis on the
character of Judas.
Only about a hundred of the 600 available tickets for the oncoming
show have been sold. However, Lugansk has stated that the show will go on, even
if the theater only has one audience member. Ticket sales have reportedly been
rising slowly.
The following day, on June 21, “Jesus Christ — Superstar” is
to stay cancelled in the nearby city of Pyatigorsk.
Although no official reason was given in May when the cancellation was first
announced, local press have cited church opposition.
This isn’t the first time the show has been at the center of
controversy: The renowned musical was pulled from a theater in Rostov-on-Don at
the end of last September claiming it misrepresented Christ and was labeled a
profanation by critics.
In March last year, the musical was cancelled in four out of
the five Belarussian cities it was scheduled to be shown in.
Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union,
the play was banned on the grounds that it contained religious propaganda. It
was staged for the first time in 1990.
Riled protesters took to the streets in Lipetsk this February. Several Orthodox
processions took place against the musical, calling it “atheistic.” However,
the musical went ahead on this occasion despite public anger.
Alexander Golovin: A Multifaceted Master
http://www.sptimesrussia.com/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=37488
Perhaps best known for his work at the Mariinsky Theater,
Golovin’s art blends Russian tradition with modernism.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of famous
Russian artist Alexander Golovin, the Russian Museum
has organized a retrospective of his works.
The exhibition brings together 150 pieces from the
collections of St. Petersburg museums, chief
among them works from the Russian
Museum itself, as well as
treasures from private collections. There are also original stage costumes made
to Golovin’s sketches and stage designs, on loan from the Alexandrinsky
Theatre.
At the turn of the 20th century, Alexander Golovin was one
of the towering figures contributing to the city’s artistic renown, and
especially to its theatrical life. The blue and gold theater curtain at the
Mariinsky, so well known to operagoers, was created by Alexander Golovin at the
start of his engagement at the theater, which lasted nearly thirty years. It
was at the opera house that he kept his studio, and in the foyer of the third
balcony you can still find his self-portrait on the wall.
The timing of this exhibition is especially significant,
given the recent expansion of the Mariinsky complex with the opening of
Mariinsky-2. Among the items on view at the exhibition are paintings, graphic
works, designs for costumes and scale models of opera stagings. In addition,
landscapes, portraits and still lifes show the wealth of Golovin’s interests,
even those outside the theater.
After finishing art school in Moscow,
where he made the acquaintance of some of Russia’s
future leading Russian artists, including Mikhail Vrubel and Vasily Polenov,
the painter went abroad and continued his artistic growth in Paris. This was at the time when Moscow’s patrons of the
arts, Morozov and Shchukin, were busily assembling a very important collection
of contemporary French paintings with which Golovin was surely familiar. His
appetite was whetted to see more.
Once established in Paris,
Golovin continued his studies, and the local influence on his manner of
painting is clear. He also traveled to Spain, which opened his eyes to yet
another world. He later would draw on his time abroad to create his stage
decoration.
He also composed a series of portraits of Spanish women.
Before his move to St. Petersburg, Golovin
worked in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, where his
most well-received designs were for productions of “Boris Godunov” and “Maiden
from Pskov.” He
gained authority as a specialist in historical styles, particularly in trends
of clothing and furniture. In the Mariinsky, following his appointment as chief
advisor on artistic issues for the Imperial Theatres, there was not a single
Russian opera that he did not stage. He set the scene for both classics and new
pieces for, among others, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky. Twice he worked for
Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons in Paris,
creating sets for “The Nightingale” and “Firebird.” Golovin’s particular style,
a unique blend of Russian artistic tradition and the turn-of-the-century modern
that he discovered in Paris,
is immediately evident at the retrospective.
His paintings contain a certain flatness, looking
two-dimensional in the manner of the Nabi group of French painters. Among the
many still lifes on display are flowers and porcelain vases combined in
different groups. One thing unites them all: The artist’s elegant color
schemes. In his landscapes and still lifes is a hint of his predecessors
Levitan and Nesterov, together with a nod to con temporaries Pierre Bonnard and
Henri Matisse. In his portraits, especially in his Spanish series, Alexander
Golovin followed the peculiarities of Edouard Manet. His works are frequently
done on paper and board using gouache and pastels. He preferred these media to
oil, because, in his opinion, they gave him brighter colors.He also liked to
coordinate big sur faces or bright spots of color, but at the same time he was
not a follower of the Impressionists. He always remained a resolute realist,
rather than working as an assembler of mosaics. Alexander Golovin created a
fair number of portraits, mostly of singers and actors. These were of his
colleagues and famous figures from the Russian artistic world at the start of
the 20th century. He preferred to paint models in his Mariinsky Theater studio,
while he dressed singers in costumes of his own design and put them on stage in
front of the decoration. Thus, he preserved the tension and dramatic impact of
the performances. His portraits of Fyodor Shalyapin are world famous,
especially in the role of Boris Godunov. The figures are all brightly lit, as
if the footlights were directed straight at them.
In his work, he was close to his contemporaries and friends
Mikhail Vrubel and Konstantin Korovin. He and Vrubel jointly did the majolica
mosaic for the facade of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. With Korovin he worked in the
Mariinsky Theater, as they shared the same views and ideas. He also painted
portraits of the artists Leo Bakst, Alexander Benois and Ivan Bilibin, with
whom he shared talent, an inquisitive mind and a sense of hard work.
After the 1917 Revolution, many of show also gives viewers a
visual tour of Golovin’s friends and colleagues emigrated, but he remained and
continued working with Vsevolod Meyerhold Konstantin Stanislavsky, staging
plays and creating opera sets at the Mariin sky Theater.
The exhibition brings back the legacy of an artist with an
enduring role in the city’s artistic achievements. The show also gives viewers
a visual tour of Russian theater, both music and drama, at the beginning of the
20th century.
The Alexander Golovin retrospective is on view through Sept.
2 in the Benois Wing of the Russian
Museum.