It's not often you see giant Catalan puppets and airborn acrobats perform alongside earthy Ukrainian ethno-music.
So I’m delighted to receive an invitation to this week’s opening of the annual Gogolfest cultural festival on Independence Square in Kyiv, featuring Barcelona-based La Fura dels Baus and Ukraine’s own DakhaBrakha.
I wrote last year about the creative paradise of Gogolfest. It’s great to see it happening again, and to see that the organisers have lost none of their flair or anarchic copywriting charm ("an avalanche growing international network"). Given the complexity of organising cultural events in general and the particular challenges of doing business in Ukraine, anyone who can run a cultural festival in Kyiv and four other Ukrainian cities simultaneously deserves encouragement and admiration. Best of luck to them, and I hope they enjoy immense support and attendances.
For anyone who likes giant puppets (and with apologies to that select band, one of whom I met recently, who fear puppets of any size) I can also recommend this video from Berlin of a performance to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wish I’d been there.
A couple of my rather poor attempts to capture the Gogolfest opening digitally are here.
Leigh Turner has been the British Ambassador to Ukraine since June 2008. You can read all his blog entries at blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/turnerenglish (in English) or blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/turner/ (Ukrainian).
