Warsaw-Kyiv Ballet Connections at the Turn of the 20th Century: Myths and Reality

The Warsaw Ballet School played an important role in the formation of ballet in Kyiv. Historians usually pay attention to the influence of Russian ballet on the development of Ukrainian ballet. However, this influence is greatly exaggerated because the first choreographers who shaped the ballet school in Kyiv were students of the Warsaw Ballet School. I try to find the truth and show how historical myths in the history of ballet were formed and why they exist to this day.

Veronika Zinchenko is a musicologist, theatre expert, author of scientific articles devoted to music in modern ballet, as well as the history of ballet in Eastern Europe. She is actively published in cultural magazines and online websites of Ukraine and Poland. Currently, she is a scholarship fellow of Cologne/Bonn Academy in Exile in which she is writing a project about the deceptiveness of the concept of Russian ballet in the historical paradigm of the development of ballet art.

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