Autumn has arrived, and the city’s cultural scene is getting busier by the week. Many of this season's events have already been confirmed, so you might as well start planning your leisure right now. Just check out our schedule for the next two months and start booking those tickets!
Music
The Jazz In Kyiv festival will please local jazz lovers Oct. 18-19. The program includes master classes in the afternoon and evening concerts at Zhovtneviy Palats with world-class jazz musicians: New Tango Orchestra, base player and composer Dave Holland, drummer Aleks Fantaev, United Quintet, Avishai Cohen, guitarist Charlie Hunter, and holder of seven Grammy awards, vocalist Al Jarreau.
The jazz musicians will barely have enough time to pack their stuff and leave before pop star Christina Aguilera will take the stage to sing for Kyivans on Oct. 21. With her outstanding voice and three albums already under her belt, as well as duos with opera singer Andrea Bocelli, jazz keyboard player Herbie Hancock and rock star Mick Jagger, Christina clearly stands out among fellow female pop singers. Her live performances are praised for professionalism, they are magnificent and glamorous, and – best of all – you can check it out for yourself at Palats Ukraina, if you’re willing to pay Hr 250 to Hr 9,500. But hurry – the cheapest tickets are, of course, the first ones to go.
Rock veteran Nazareth, whose members used to give smashing shows in the days of their youth, will play in Kyiv once again on Oct. 10. This time the group is visiting Ukraine as a part of their jubilee world tour to commemorate twenty years of their stage career. Five days later they will be followed by another hard-rock legend, Deep Purple. The latter will perform in Palats Sportu and then move further into the country to Odesa, Cherkasy and Dnipropetrovsk.
On Nov. 24 the German band Haggard will demonstrate their craft of combining classic, folk, renaissance, medieval and rock music into a style called “symphonic metal” at the Center for Culture and Arts of the National Aviation University. Haggard, in fact, started out as a death metal band in 1991, but altered its style after the first release. In Kyiv, the band will promote their fourth studio album with a Viking name “Tales of Ithiria.”
The city’s clubbers won’t have to be bored either. On Oct. 11 Xlib Club is going to host deejay Tim Sweeney, author and creator of the New York radio program “Beats in Space,” who is also an official deejay of the independent record label DFA Records. So, prepare for a hot disco-rock night.
Movies
The biggest event on the Kyiv movie scene will be Molodist (Youth), an international annual film festival that has been around for 38 years. It starts on Oct. 18. It specializes in young directors’ movies, but also spoils movie lovers with wonderful retrospectives and art-house hits. So film buffs won’t have a minute to sleep for a whole week – films usually run non-stop in several cinemas from dawn till dusk and sometimes even at night.
The festival has competitive and non-competitive programs. This year the competition program includes student works, shorts and features from around the world. This year, the list of young directors presenting their work includes Vitaly Potrukh with his short “Zakon” (“Law”), Dmytro Sukholytsky-Sobchuk and Maryna Vroda with their student works “Otrotstvo” (“Teenage”) and “Doshch” (“Rain”), and Ihor Podolchak with a feature “Las Meninas.”
The non-competition program includes “The Night of Short Movies,” a retrospective made up of German, British, French and Italian short movies; and the “Molodist Against Totalitarism” anthology, which is basically Ukrainian movies shot between 2007-2008, Polish films from Andrzej Wajda’s school, and retrospectives of movies with Alain Delon and Joanna Moro. You can also see films by Andre Delvaux, the Serbian “New Wave,” the New French Cinema, the “Oriental Express” program of Asian movies, a wide animation anthology, and documentaries on the Holodomor.
The most popular part of the program is called “The Festival of Festivals,” showing the winners and nominees of world-famous film festivals. This year the program includes “Nightwatching” directed by Peter Greenaway, “Bumazhny Soldat” (“Paper Soldier”) by Aleksei German Jr., “The Palermo Shooting” by Wim Wenders, “Zhivi i Pomni” (“Live and Remember”) by Aleksandr Proshkin, “O’Horten” by Bent Hamer, “Three Monkeys” by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and “Lorna’s Silence” by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.
Fortunately the ticket policy of Molodist has changed in the last two years and now it is possible to attend all events by simply buying a ticket. For years, you needed special invitations to attend certain screenings.
In case you miss one of the movies you wanted to see, you will be able to catch it throughout the year – they are rotated in cinemas throughout the year until the next Molodist arrives.
Naturally, there are non-festival movies to expect his fall. Probably the most anticipated premiere is “Quantum of Solace,” a new James Bond movie, scheduled to start on Nov. 6. Its main star is Daniel Craig, dubbed “The Blond Bond”. But it’s not him that makes the film especially welcome in Ukraine. It’s the new Bond Babe – Camille – played by Ukrainian actress and model Olga Kurylenko. She was also the one who dubbed Camille in Ukrainian.
Also look out for a new film by Joel and Ethan Coens “Burn After Reading,” with a whole constellation of stars: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and John Malkovich among others.
Theater
Theater aficionados and ballet lovers should get ready for mega- excitement, since their schedules will be stuffed. For a start, Katerina Tomas, the leading dancer of the Spanish Tomas de Madrid Flamenco Theater will give a performance at Zhovtneviy Palats on Oct. 21. Soon after that, on Nov. 10-12 you will be able to admire the National Georgian ballet Sukhishvili with their new program. Despite the fact that the Georgian dancers are frequent guests in Kyiv, it’s hard not to be fascinated by their stunning plastics and rhythm every time you see them onstage. For dessert, on Nov. 23-24 the National Opera Theater will host a performance by the four “kings” of ballet: lead dancer of the English Royal Ballet Johan Kobborg, star of American Ballet Theater Angel Corella, former dancer of American Ballet Theater and current leader of his personal studio in California Ethan Stiefel, and lead dancer of the Big Russian Ballet Theater Nikolay Tsiskaridze. Each one of the four dancers will present their separate dance program and take part in one general performance with an appropriate name, “For 4.”
If you were to choose a play, make sure you visit the touring Roman Viktyuk Theater. It’s going to show two plays – “Sluzhanki” (“The Maids”) based on the play by Jean Genet and scheduled for show on Sept. 30 (Zhovtneviy Palats), and “Sestry” (“Sisters”) based on the letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s wife and excerpts from his novels. The latter is actually going to be a benefit performance by the actress Ekaterina Vasilieva and will take place on Oct. 21 in Tsentralniy Dim Ofitseriv. If you want to see a premiere show in one of Kyiv’s theatres, go for “Richard the Third” that will be on at the Left Bank Drama Theater in November, or “Konotopska Vidma” (“Konotop Witch”), scheduled to premier on the last days of September in the Kyiv Academic Youth Theater. “Richard the Third” is a Shakespeare play staged in the traditional style by young theater director Andriy Bilous. “The Witch” is a mixture of musical and burlesque performances by Mykola Yaremkiv and claims to be a witty composition of humor and mysticism.
