Vasyl Avramenko

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R.I.P
Vasyl

Vasyl Kyrylovych Avramenko (Ukrainian: Василь Кирилович Авраменко; sometimes transcribed as Vasile) (March 22, 1895 – May 6, 1981) was a Ukrainian actor, dancer, choreographer, balletmaster, director, and film producer, credited with spreading Ukrainian folk dance across the world. Colourful, energetic, imaginative, and, quite often exasperating, he was an impresario greatly reminiscent of The Music Man. For his unparalleled missionary zeal and his love of Ukrainian culture, he is considered by many to be the "Father of Ukrainian Dance".

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R.I.P
Vasyl

Early days Vasyl Avramenko was born on March 22, 1895, in Stebliv, a townlet located on the Ros' river approximately 100 km south of Kyiv. Orphaned at a young age, he was forced to wander homeless as an adolescent, until he eventually headed east, crossing the vast expanse of Imperial Russia towards Siberia, and reunited with his older brothers in Vladivostok, on the coast of the Sea of Japan. There, Vasyl's eldest brother taught him how to read and write, which enabled Vasyl to gain employment at the naval base. This position allowed Avramenko to visit several major Asian ports as a crewman aboard Russian naval vessels; such worldly exposure encouraged in him a greater love of learning, and he returned to study with his brother whenever possible, eventually earning the qualifications to become a primary school teacher. It was during this time that Vasyl Avramenko saw a production of Ivan Kotlyarevsky's operetta Natalka Poltavka in Vladivostok in 1912, which Avramenko later recounted as having been the first experience of viewing his fellow Ukrainians on stage. After passing his teacher's exams at Vladivostok men's gymnasium in 1915, the Russian Empire having already entered World War I, Avramenko was drafted into…Citește mai mult

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R.I.P
Vasyl

Formative years In Kyiv, in the summer of 1917, Avramenko attended three of Vasyl Verkhovynets' rare and irregularly scheduled lectures on Ukrainian folk dance, its choreography and stage performance, including theory and practical demonstrations. Verkhovynets' theories of Ukrainian dance, which he based on his theatrical training and his extensive research of the village dances of Central Ukraine, would inspire Avramenko to live the life of an artist. During this time, Avramenko took copious notes compiling a vocabulary of Ukrainian dances and dance steps, which he would later develop into his life's work. In his book, Ukrainian National Dances, Music, and Costumes, Avramenko acknowledged the work of Verkhovynets' and the Ukrainian theater in preserving and elevating the legacy of dance in Ukraine.

Vasyl Avramenko a adăugat o fotografie

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R.I.P
Vasyl

By spring of 1919, Avramenko was for a short time in Stanyslaviv, a member of Yosyf Standnyk's theatre before joining Mykola Sadovsky's troupe. During this time, he was able to apply some of the lessons he had learned in the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv. In the fight between the Bolshevik and White Russian Armies, Avramenko served in the Central Telegraph Administration of the Ukrainian People's Republic. When UNR forces retreated west in 1919–20, he remained in Soviet occupied territory and worked with Ukrainian itinerant troupes of actors that continued to tour the region. He was arrested at this time and interned in Kalisz. In February 1921, Avramenko established a school of Ukrainian folk dancing in the Kalisz camp, the first of more than 100 schools over the next 20 years across Europe and North America. He impressed on his pupils that Ukrainian folk dancing could be an art form. He began with 100 students (everyone from the guards to small children), teaching them the basic steps of Ukrainian dance, eventually teaching whole dances, and finally putting on a celebrated performance May 24. In the fall of that year he met Oleksandr Koshyts. Koshyts remarked: "I was invited…Citește mai mult

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North America December 1925, Avramenko arrived in Canada in Halifax, as a man with a mission; it being his determination to tour North America with dancers, singers, and instrumentalists to bring attention to the Ukrainian people and their fight for independence. Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians in Canada at the time lived on the prairies. Avramenko decided to stay in Toronto, and opened his first dance school in North America in St. Mary's Roman Catholic hall, today the Factory Theatre building. For fees from five to thirty dollars, he offered a set of lessons for pre-schoolers to grown-ups. The school inculcated its pupils with Ukrainian pride and identity. His troupe first performed, the year after his arrival, at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) August 30 through September 11 to grandstands filled with up to twenty-five thousand spectators. When the dancers gave a special performance at the women's pavilion, Florence Randal Livesay spoke glowingly about Ukrainian folk dancing. Avaramenko's name now became coupled with that of Koshyts in the Ukrainian-Canadian press. Articles about him appeared in every major Ukrainian-Canadian newspaper, as well as the English ones. Avramenko arrived in Winnipeg in January 1927. His troupe gave their first performance at the Canadian-Ukrainian…Citește mai mult

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Avramenko and his disciples began to set up schools quickly across the prairies, in Saskatoon, Yorkton, and Edmonton. Their base of support was a strong Ukrainian-Canadian community. For example, some 20 Ukrainian public school teachers attended his Edmonton classes, and Avramenko gave them instructions on how to teach dance when they returned to their schools. Avramenko traveled from town to town, teaching the same dances. When he was finished teaching in a town, he would assign a leader to continue teaching to the residents. One of these leaders was Chester Kuc, who founded the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers in 1959, and Cheremosh Ukrainian Dance Company in 1969. On June 16, 1928, Avramenko married one of his star dance pupils, Pauline Garbolinsky, from Winnipeg, and soon the couple was living in New York City. With a network of dance schools across Canada, Avramenko now turned his sites to the United States. Lacking business acumen, he had debts in excess of three thousand dollars upon leaving Canada. New York at this time was a creative center for drama, song, and dance. Eugene O'Neill was having his plays produced. George Gershwin was writing musicals here. Martha Graham had just opened a school of contemporary…Citește mai mult

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Film producer By October 1933, Avramenko was in Hollywood. Along the way to the west coast, he obtained loans and donations from Ukrainian immigrants in these far-flung communities, only aware of who he was through what they had read, unaware as yet of his inability to handle finances. Avramenko always claimed to have been offered a lucrative contract to dance in the film Catherine the Great starring Marlene Dietrich, but had refused on the grounds that the dances would be billed as 'Russian' dances. He staged performances at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933, and borrowed a thousand dollars from his father-in-law to do so. In 1935, his Baltimore pupils participated in the White House Easter Egg Roll and he claimed a victory for the Ukrainian cause and published postcards with photos of Eleanor Roosevelt at the event.

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Natalka Poltavka On the road most of the time, leaving behind his wife with their newly born daughter, with little if anything to live on, so that his wife depended on friends to survive, by 1934, his marriage began to fall apart. The Great Depression made it hard to earn a living running dance schools. Avramenko made plans to produce a feature film based on the oldest and most popular Ukrainian operetta, Natalka Poltavka, convinced that it would bring fame and glory to the Ukrainian cause. He rallied wealthy widows and convinced them that people in their community needed a place to apprentice in film. The Avramenko Film Company was established in New York City in 1936. Having raised enough money, twenty-five thousand dollars, to begin production, fortuitously Edgar G. Ulmer, a real Hollywood film director appeared on the scene. Ulmer had lost favour in Hollywood after running off with the wife of the nephew of Carl Laemmle Sr., who owned Universal Studios.

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Ulmer put together a film crew and rewrote the screenplay. The musical score was recorded ahead of time at Reeves Sound Studio in New York City. The set was located on a farm northwest of Trenton, New Jersey. Ulmer said of Avramenko: "Nothing was impossible for Avramenko… The man was so enthusiastic. I couldn't say no to him…. He was the spark of everything." Without a Hollywood distributor, the film company rented theatres at high cost to show the film. In the end, though an artistic success, the film left Avramenko in further debt. Koshyts was particularly critical of the film, finding it offensive and tasteless. Not surprisingly, his review appeared in Svoboda. It sounded very much like a personal attack. No doubt Avramenko's personality had got under Koshyts' skin when they had toured together. Koshyts' criticism was not without merit. Avramenko, despite his rhetoric to develop a Ukrainian film industry, had brought in people and resources from outside the community in order to make the film. In fairness though to Avramenko, these resources did not exist in the Ukrainian community at that time. This was the first Ukrainian language film produced in the United States.

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Cossacks in Exile Unable to raise money in New York due to the financial setback of his last film, he turned to Canada to raise the funds for his next feature film Cossacks in Exile. On September 22, 1937, Avramenko returned to Winnipeg, and announced the creation of the Ukrainian Film Corporation. At this distance from New York, audiences had seen and loved his film Natalka Poltavka, but knew nothing about the questionable financial state in which it had left its shareholders, and Avramenko. Appealing unabashedly to patriotic Ukrainian sentiment, Avramenko sold rights to screen the new film province by province. Rumours circulated that he was using these funds to pay off old debts. Dr. Mykyta Mandryka, the secretary-treasurer of the new company seemed to be the only one to fully appreciate the situation, and wrote a letter to Avramenko. "We really do not understand each other, and this is why: you think it is necessary, above all, to start producing the film with or without money, and you believe things will somehow turn out well. You live on high hopes and faith in an imminent miracle. But that is not enough to handle people's money wisely." Avramenko ignored all…Citește mai mult

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Later life The remaining years of his life, Avramenko spent hauling around film canisters, showing his films or outright selling them wherever he disembarked. In 1954 he released the documentary film "The Triumph of Ukrainian Dance", consisting primarily of excerpts from documentaries and feature films produced by him during the 1930s. In postwar Canada between 1945 and 1947, Avramenko offered Ukrainian folk dancing courses. One of his students in Winnipeg at this time was William Kurelek, nineteen at the time. By the mid-1960s folk dance ensembles were reinventing themselves: Rusalka in Winnipeg, Yevshan in Saskatoon, Shumka in Edmonton, as well as the touring ensembles from the Soviet Union, the State Folk Dance Ensemble of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic under Pavlo Virsky. They were interested in preserving the spirit of the folk dance rather than preserving traditional dance steps. Avramenko's concerts juxtaposed against these dances were simply a bit of nostalgia. During the 1960s Avramenko spent time in Australia, teaching dance at a number of Ukrainian schools, particularly around Melbourne. Towards the very end of his life, Avramenko created tribute events, for example "Ukrainian Tribute to Australia", and celebrations of some of his personal triumphs and milestones, and rallied the…Citește mai mult

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Bogdanovich, Peter. Edgar G. Ulmer: An Interview, Film Culture, 1974. Halich, Wasyl. Ukrainians in the United States,(1970), Ayer Publishing. Martynowych, Orest T. "'All That Jazz!' The Avramenko Phenomenon in Canada, 1925-1929" in Journal of Ukrainian Studies 28, No.2 (Winter 2003). Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. ISSN 0228-1635. Martynowych, Orest T. The showman and the Ukrainian cause. University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2014. Nahachewsky, Andriy. "Avramenko and the Paradigm of National Culture" in Journal of Ukrainian Studies 28, No.2 (Winter 2003). Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. ISSN 0228-1635. Shatulsky, Myron (1980). The Ukrainian Folk Dance, Kobzar Publishing Co. Ltd. ISBN 0-9692078-5-9. Subtelny, Orest. Ukrainians in North America, An Illustrated History. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1991. Swyripa, Frances and Thompson, John Herd, editors. Ukrainians in Canada During The Great War, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1983. Zerebecky, Bohdan (1985). Ukrainian Dance Resource Booklets, Series I-IV, Ukrainian Canadian Committee, Saskatchewan Provincial Council. In Ukrainian

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Avramenko, Vasyl (1947). Ukrainian National Dances, Music, and Costumes (Українські Національні Танки, Музика, і Cтрій), National Publishers, Ltd. Pihuliak, Ivan (1979). Wasyl Avramenko and the Rebirth of Ukrainian National Dancing, Part 1 (Василь Авраменко та Відродження Українського Танку, Частина Перша), published by the author.

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External links Vasyl Avramenko. Solo Dance Vasyl Avramenko papers at the Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. Zoloto's Tribute to Avramenko Avramenko Fund Cheremosh's history Short bio Vasyl Avramenko at IMDb Vasile Avramenko fonds (R6747) at Library and Archives Canada