The slim man energetically walks along narrow corridors of a shabby Soviet-era building of the Kyiv state ballet school. He suddenly stops, proudly looking at the flock of young ballerinas who are returning from their classes.
Nobuhiro Terada, a 39-year-old native of Japan, who has been working as an artistic director of the Kyiv state ballet school since 2012, is pleased with his students.
“Ukrainian children are the most talented ballet dancers in the world,” he says.
The 180 children studying at the school owe Terada for their professional growth, career prospects and almost paternal care.
Every year he arranges contests, sends his best students on tours, invites European and Russian ballet stars to Kyiv, creates new ballets and even orders nice new theatrical costumes.
“If I did not do anything like this, children would quickly lose interest in ballet. My goal is to keep them interested in studying at our ballet school,” he explains.
Last year Terada launched the Grand Prix Kyiv international ballet festival, which aims to support talented young dancers and to draw the Ukrainian government’s attention to the state of the art of ballet in Ukraine. The contest quickly gained popularity abroad.
This year contestants from Moldova, Japan, Germany and Brazil participated in ballet dance competition, which was held at the Kyiv National Opera House on March 17-19. “We managed to award 30 children with different presents – money, iPods, ballet master-classes – to encourage them,” Terada says.
Terada’s cultural initiatives need money, and since the government does not provide any funding, he seeks sponsors on his own. Japan’s Toshihiko Takahashi, Volodymyr Malakhov’s charity foundation, and the United World Cultures Foundation were the main sponsors of this year’s Grand Prix Kyiv.
Terada says that finding sponsors is never easy, but “every year more and more people come to watch our children’s performances in the school, and the audience really enjoys how the children dance. And people start to understand that they have to help them.”
Born in Kyoto to a family of ballet dancers, Terada has been involved in classical dance since he was four. In Japan in the 1980s, it was mainly an activity for girls. Boys who participated were mocked.
He first visited Kyiv at the age of seven.
Terada’s parents took him on their dancing tour to Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Opera House.
“I saw that many boys were involved in ballet here and told my parents I wanted to study in Ukraine. But my mother said it was impossible,” Terada recalls.
But in 1987 his dream came true, a year after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev paid an official visit to Kyoto. Kyiv and Kyoto have been sister cities since 1971, so it was decided that a Japanese boy would be sent to study ballet in Kyiv, with the aim of strengthening cultural cooperation between Japan and the Soviet Union.
Terada turned out to be that boy. He had to go to Ukraine alone.
“At first I was happy, but as my departure was approaching I started worry about where I would live, how I would study without knowing Russian. I was frightened,” he says.
Terada had reasons to worry. He resided in a ballet school dormitory, sharing his room with seven other students. As the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, his student life became even harder.
“We were constantly hungry, eating only porridge or boiled buckwheat. Two times a year we got mashed potatoes and a piece of meat, and it was a feast then,” Terada recalls.
But he never complained about the seven-hour daily training and even took on extra classes. His efforts were rewarded. Terada is now a soloist of the National Opera of Ukraine. He is the first and only Japanese person awarded with the titles of Honored Artist of Ukraine and People’s Artist of Ukraine, one of the highest state awards.
Between his dancing tours and teaching at the ballet school, Terada is looking for opportunities to restore the old school’s building constructed in the 1960s and not renovated for more than 30 years.
