When Vlad Troitskyi, a prominent Ukrainian theater director, made his first performances as a student of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute’s radio engineering faculty, he thought it was just a hobby. Today, he is an internationally known theater director and producer of two popular music bands.
It all started in 1994 when Troitskyi created Dakh, a modern theater group. It not only became Kyiv’s most famous art house theater, but gave a start to Dakhabrakha and Dakh Daughters, music bands that are popular in Ukraine and abroad.
Troitsky, 51, is a producer of this polymorphic art group, which also includes GogolFest, an annual festival of contemporary arts held in Kyiv in September.
Art wasn’t Troitskyi’s first choice. In the last years of the Soviet Union, young Troitskyi chose a prestigious tech occupation, radio engineering. But soon after receiving a degree in it in 1990, Troitskyi switched his career to theater and never returned to engineering.
His fascination with theater started almost as an accident. As a student, he wanted to take a breakdance class, but by chance ended up in a pantomime class. There, he got acquainted with an alternative theater movement, a psychological theater, represented by Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrošius and others. It was strikingly different from the theaters in the U.S.S.R. It led Troitskyi to founding his own theater company, Dakh.
In nearly 22 years of its existence, Troitskyi directed more than 40 performances for Dakh. Dakh used to have its own location at Velyka Vasylkivska Street in Kyiv. But in 2013, the theater moved out for financial reasons and has been giving performances elsewhere.
Troitskyi’s latest creation is opera-requiem “Iyov” that will premier in Kyiv on March 1.
It’s a modern interpretation of the biblical story of Job (Iyov), a man who didn’t denounce his fate although his life was ruined by the devil. “Iyov” will tour in Austria and Denmark this spring and summer.
Troitskyi says that he creates his works “for the world” rather than for the local community. “Ukrainians have a lower purchasing power,” he says.
Music band DakhaBrakha, a folk quartet that Troitskyi put together from his theater actors, has spent a lot of last year touring the U.S. (Read Kyiv Post’s profile of DakhaBrakha, “DakhaBrakha wins fans around globe,” published on Nov. 9 on www.kyivpost.com), selling out every show.
According to Troitskyi, few bands find it worth their while financially to tour Ukraine.
Troitskyi says that many people who attended his theater’s performances abroad “had never heard of Ukrainian culture before.”
“The knowledge about Ukraine is very fragmental,” he says. “Ukraine is treated as a victim rather than a source of new ideas or projects.”
For that, he blames Ukrainian state cultural institutions, the outdated “feudal structures” that have no reason to modernize because they will receive state funding any way. “They monopolized the right to represent the Ukrainian culture home and abroad,” Troitskyi says.
At the same time, young artists and modern cultural projects receive only 10 percent of the state budget allocated for culture by Troitsky’s estimate. The rest goes to the cultural institutions, theaters and museums with “national” in their titles, bestowed upon them from the Ministry of Culture.
He believes state and private cultural companies need to create a cultural platform for artists who will be working as contractors, being booked for specific projects.
“We need a space where new artists and technologies will evolve,” he says. “In my microscopic area of 250 square meters (Dakh Theater), I made so many international projects that the state has not been able to produce in all the years of independence. And I made it without a penny from the state.”
“Iyov” (opera-requiem)
March 1. 7:30 p.m.
Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI) Palace of Culture (37 Peremohy Ave.)
Hr 150-450
Tickets are available at concert.ua and parter.ua
