Donetsk theatre dances to its own tune amid war drums

There’s nothing rebellious, these days, in lugging a rifle or rocket launcher around Donetsk, or cruising the streets in an armoured personnel carrier or tank.

No one bats an eyelid at gangs of men bristling with guns and grenades and, after six months of conflict, people young and old can identify a military vehicle by its rumble, and an artillery piece by its boom.

In the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a militarised pseudo-statelet run by Russian-backed separatists, subversives now look different.

It could be a young woman toting a violin case through an almost deserted city centre, or men not donning camouflage to go to war but changing for ballet practice in the basement-cum-bomb shelter of a local theatre.

In this crucible of conflict between Russian-backed insurgents and pro-western Kiev, where the combatants expect public paeans to their heroism and denunciations of the enemy, just to speak in different terms or defend neutral ground feels like an act of resistance.

“We shouldn’t be political. We are here for our audience, for the people,” states Yevgeny Denisenko, general director of the Donetsk opera and ballet.

“Now it’s more important than ever to have cultural events in Donetsk,” he says, in the cavernous theatre a short walk from the militants’ headquarters.

“The company’s summer break coincided with the worst bombing, and it was an awful time. But now I see people are recharged by our performances. We reopened as usual at the beginning of October, with shows for adults and children; we just finish earlier than normal, so people can get home safely.”

Adherence to a 10pm curfew is one of many changes forced upon the company, which was founded in 1932 and moved to this Donetsk theatre nine years later.

Signs taped to its massive walls show it is now a designated bomb shelter, and performances resumed to the thud of artillery fire a few kilometres away.

The company has not escaped unscathed: in September, a shell hit a storage unit and destroyed scenery for many productions, and just three days after the start of the new season Vasily Ryabenky, the theatre’s leader for a quarter of a century, died of a heart attack at 55 years of age.

Theatre staff believe Donetsk’s descent into war, the destruction of the stage sets and the responsibility Ryabenky felt for his artists and audience placed unbearable stress on his health.

Now his black-framed portrait greets visitors to the theatre, and his successor, Denisenko, will not use his office until 40 days have passed since his death.

Denisenko now works in the room of the chief conductor who, like the artistic director and about one-fifth of the theatre’s staff, has fled Donetsk.

‘We have enough people to carry on,” insists Denisenko (70). “The main factor is that Ukraine stopped paying our wages in July; if people got their salaries they would be here.”

They weren’t paid much even in better times: about €300 a month, plus a little extra for long service and awards received.

“People are continuing on enthusiasm alone, on their love of the work,” Denisenko says. “I can’t explain it any other way.”

Stoicism

There is great stoicism in the people of Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk province – collectively known as Donbas – which shows in their determination to keep working, to repair bomb damage wherever possible, and to maintain basic services like street cleaning and rubbish collection. That spirit will be tested by a cold winter, and Kiev’s decision to halt all state wages and benefits in militant-held areas, but the opera and ballet company can tap its own long tradition of defiance and survival.

The Donetsk theatre opened in April 1941, just two months before Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. By October the city was occupied. The company was evacuated to Kyrgyzstan in central Asia, where they performed at military bases and hospitals, before returning to a liberated Donetsk in April 1944.

Today’s war has already driven away Donetsk’s sporting pride, the Shakhtar football team, which now plays its home games in Lviv, 1,200km to the west. Shakhtar’s spectacular 52,000-seat stadium was hit by rockets, as was the neighbouring Donetsk regional museum, which was then run by Denisenko.

“I was at the museum for 16 years, and it was one of Ukraine’s best,” he says. “It was struck by 15 shells, and the roof and 241 windows were smashed.”

In the office of a departed lead conductor, among a depleted company still reeling from the death of a beloved director, in a shell-shocked city braced for more bloodshed, Denisenko unfurls an architect’s grand plans for the theatre’s reconstruction.

"The previous government approved the project, but now it is frozen," he says. He had hoped to open the season with Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschero (A Masked Ball), with the Italian director Italo Nunziata. "We are just waiting for him to come back. He says he will, when things calm down."

Art and war

Striding through the theatre, Denisenko swaps greetings and news with colleagues, watched by the busts of great writers: Anton Chekhov and Taras Shevchenko are neighbours, the Russian playwright beside Ukraine’s national poet.

Despite Denisenko’s efforts, politics have forced their way into the theatre, and others have blurred the line between art and war.

Late last month, Russian crooner and pro-Kremlin politician Iosif Kobzon defied Ukraine’s travel ban to sing to a packed Donetsk opera house, ending his show of Soviet favourites with a duet alongside a camouflage-clad separatist leader.

A few days later, popular Russian actor Mikhail Porechenkov fired a machine gun with the militants, allegedly at Ukrainian positions.

But today there will be ballet at Denisenko’s theatre, and tomorrow opera, and musical fairy tales for children are performed most weekends; tickets for all shows are capped at less than €3.

“The uncertainty is very hard,” says Denisenko. “But we’ll survive.”