Kuda? Kam? Gdje? This Weekend

ONGOING

• Film: Ballets Russes at IFC Center, Night Watch at AMC Empire 25 and Landmark Sunshine Cinema, Mirage at Quad Cinema
• Performances: Slava's Snowshoe at Union Square Theatre (through 2 July); Moscow Cats Theatre at Lamb's Theatre (openended)
• Museums: Chornobyl + 20: This Is Our Land ... We Still Live Here at the Ukrainian Museum (through 28 May); Mir Iskusstva: Russia's Age of Elegance at the Princeton University Art Museum (through 11 June 2006); The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motif in Ukrainian Folk Art at the Ukrainian Museum (through September 2006).
• Galleries: Ilija!, exhibition of self-taught Serbian artist Ilija Basicevic at Galerie St. Etienne (through 18 March); Group show at the Grant Gallery (through 27 March); In Practice: Special Project Series at Scupture Center (through 3 April); Dynasty: An exhibition modeled on the dynamic of multigenerational families at Gallery MC (through 5 April); Glen Hansen: Praha the Fischbach Gallery. (through 15 April); Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz: Drawings from the 1930s at Ubu Gallery (through 22 April); ID – Ideal Identity at the Czech Center and Frane Mlinar and Miro Sinovcic at Mario Novak Gallery (ongoing).

FRIDAY

• 9:30 a.m. – 8:00 p.m., "From My Wondrous, Beautiful Far-Away": Modern Russian Literature in Retrospect conference at Union Theological Seminary Social Hall (3041 Broadway at 121st Street). Free!
• 3:00 p.m., Art from the Land of the Firebird gallery talk by Marianne Grey at the Princeton Museum of Art. Side program of the landmark exhibit Mir Isskustva: Russia’s Age of Elegance.

SATURDAY

• 9:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m., "From My Wondrous, Beautiful Far-Away": Modern Russian Literature in Retrospect conference at Union Theological Seminary Social Hall (3041 Broadway at 121st Street). Free!
• 2:00 – 4:00 p.m., Pysanky Workshop at the Ukrainian Museum (222 East 6th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues). First of several in the run-up to Easter. All supplies are provided, fee is $15.00 for adults, 10:00 for students and seniors, $3.00 for children 12-16. Reservations are required, please call 212 228-0110 or e-mail: info@ukrainianmuseum.org.
• 5:00 p.m., Olga Isaeva at Russian Bookstore No. 21 (174 Fifth Avenue).

SUNDAY

• 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., "From My Wondrous, Beautiful Far-Away": Modern Russian Literature in Retrospect conference at Union Theological Seminary Social Hall (3041 Broadway at 121st Street). Free!
• 11:00 a.m., Demonstration in solidarity with Belarusian voters, First Avenue and 43rd Street.
• 1:00 p.m., Slovak Independence Day reception at St John Nepomucene Church Hall (411 East 66th Street).
• 2:00 - 5:00 p.m., Reshaping the Elements: Still Life as Collage family art workshop for children aged 8 to 12 at the Princeton Museum of Art. Free, but pre-registration required. Call 609-258-2697. A side program of the landmark exhibit Mir Isskustva: Russia’s Age of Elegance.

European Folk Festival

On Sunday, the Slavic Heritage Council of America is presenting its annual European Folk Festival at the HAFT Auditorium at FIT (corner of 27th Street and 5th Avenue).

Among the dance companies featured are the Bosilek Bulgarian Folk Dance Company, Die Erste Gottscheer Tanz Gruppe, Gemis Croatian Folk Ensemble, Goce Delcev Macedonian Folk Dance Ensemble, Grachanitza Serbian Folklore Ensemble, the Greek American Folklore Society, Kozlov International Dancers, Limbora Slovak Folk Ensemble, the Polish-American Folk Dance Company and the Syzokryli Ukrainian Dance Ensemble.

The show starts at 2:30 p.m., and tickets are $25.00, $20.00 for senior citizens and children under 12.

Sunday: Elections in Belarus

Belarusians go to the polls on 19 March - this Sunday - to elect their next president, but all signs point to a landslide win by sitting president Aleksandr Lukashenka. He's already ammended the Belarusian constitution so that he can run again, and there are already allegations that the elections are being rigged (Check out Bringing Down Europe's Last Ex-Soviet Dictator from the New York Times, 26 February 2006).

Aleksandr Milinkevich is the opposition's best hope for victory, but it won't come easy. The opposition (and supporters outside the country) are already gearing up for what they hope will be the next in a series of popular revolts, beginning in 2000 in Serbia and continuing through Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Here in New York, the Belarusian-American Association is planning solidarity demonstrations on Sunday starting at 11:00 a.m. near United Nations headquarters, at First Avenue and 43rd Street. Later, the demonstration will move to the Consulate of the Republic of Belarus at Third Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets. Finally, demonstrators will march along Third Avenue to the Belarusian Mission to the UN at 67th Street.

(Photo: 19 March - The Choice is Yours, from Zubr)

Fieldtrip: Slavs of Phillly!

Philadelphia may well be considered the sixth borough of New York City, but it's still a fieldtrip. Don't worry, though, it's worth it. Aside from the regular tourist stops, Pennsylvania's largest city also has a number of Slavic sites and events.

The most active group seems to be the Poles, and April is Polish-American Heritage Month. One major organization is the Polish American Cultural Center, and another is the Polish Heritage Society of Philadelphia. There's also a folk dancing troupe, the Janosik Polish Dance Ensemble.

Tourists will want to visit the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial and the Polish American Cultural Center Museum. And you can dive into Polish cuisine in Philadelphia at Yesterdays Old Tyme Ice Cream, Syrenka Luncheonette and Warsaw Cafe.

Next up is Russians (background from Citypaper). A good place to start looking for Russian events in Philadelphia is the community site Russian Philly, the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce and the arts organization Creative Collective. The University of Pennsylvania also hosts the Russian Cultural Association and the Russian Dead Poets' Society. The Russian Mafia is also active, apparently.

Czechs celebrate Czech-American Week during the last week of October. The primary Czech site in the city is the National Shrine of St. John Neumann, the Bohemian-born bishop of Philadelphia (1852-1860) and the first male American saint. There is also a Masaryk Commemorative Plaque at the Park Hyatt Bellevue Hotel, and the entrance street to the hotel is also named as Masaryk Place, in honor of a visit by the first Czechoslovak president. There is also an Honorary Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Philadelphia.

Former Yugoslavs do not seem to have made too much of an impact in Philadelphia, but the Kensington area is home to at least one Yugoslav restaurant, Jovan's Place.

Ukrainians are based just outside of Philadelphia, in Jenkintown. There you'll find the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center, home base for a number of organizations, including the Cheremosh Hutsul Society, the Ukrainian Heritage School, the Ukrainian Human Rights Committee, the Ukrainian Professional Society and the Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble and school. You can find Ukrainian events in the Philadelphia area at Brama.com.

For more academic-minded visitors, the Society of Pennsylvania Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies is a treasure trove. Their guide to manuscript and microfilm collections includes Carpatho-Rusyn, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Ukrainian and Sorb (a.k.a. Windish, a.k.a. Lusatian) materials. They've also got an on-line exhibition, Preserving Polonia in America.

Boris Zhutovsky: Sound - Sign - Letter

The Type Directors Club is hosting a salon tomorrow evening entitled Sound - Sign - Letter featuring Russian artist Boris Zhutovsky at 6:00 p.m.

Zutovsky will speak on several themes, incuding What's in the letter? What need of the human race was it meant to serve, and does it? The manifestations of the letter and text in Russian history, The letter as part of the culture, Letter and fashion, Type, letter and text in my own work: illustration, painting, drawings and The expectations for the letter in history and human memory.

Zhutovsky was a prominent member of the Soviet non-conformist art movement as early as the late 1950s. He lives and works in Moscow.

The Type Directors Club Conference Center is located at 127 West 25th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 8th floor.

(And while it doesn't have a thing to do with Slavs of New York, it's worth pointing out that the Type Directors Club is running a walking tour by Paul Shaw entitled Letters of New York in May. The unique tour will focus on the letterings of public and private signage throughout the city.)

Glen Hansen: Praha

Glen Hansen: Praha opens tomorrow at the Fischbach Gallery. Hansen made several visits to Prague to complete these paintings, which were executed in a precisionist style and focus largely on architecture.

Among the subjects are the city's architectural highlights, but also architectural details such as street clocks. Hansen's use of light and color often make even the most beautiful subjects even more so.

The exhibit runs through 15 April at the Fischbach Gallery (210 Eleventh Avenue).

Dancing With Eastern Europeans

Tomorrow night, EuroCircle is presenting Dancing With Eastern Europeans at Club 58 (formerly known as Au Bar, 41 East 58th Street between Park and Madison) at 6:00 p.m. There is no cover for the event, but guests must be RSVP’d and there will be complimentary appetizers between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., and a cash bar. Among the entertainment will be belly dancing by Valeria.

The easiest way to RSVP is to join EuroCircle, which organizes a number of networking events in New York and elsewhere each month. Otherwise, email your name and country of origin to newyork@eurocircle.com with “March 16 RSVP” in the subject line.

The event is presented association with a number of Eastern European-related groups and individuals representing Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Please note that the dress code is “business, trendy, sexy, dressy (please do not wear sneakers etc).”

Fun with phrasebooks

A recent post over on Jaunted linked to an interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle by John Flinn, He can speak their language - if they only understood it, about the author’s travails with a Croatian phrasebook.

Not that it has much to do with the Slavs of New York, but it brought to mind an article from Slovenia’s weekly newsmagazine Mladina from last year, Tomica Šuljić’s Turistični novorek: Let's Use A Condom.

Šuljić wrote the piece after receiving the page from the guide dealing with sexual terms in a widely forwarded email with the subject line “SFOR textbook for Bosnia,” and was later surprised when he found out it was actually a Croatian phrasebook even though the language presented was Serbian. He critiques the Lonely Planet Eastern Europe Survival Kit for similarly peppering its Croatian phrasebook section with Serbianisms. But regardless of the Croatianisms or Serbianisms, the English alone is amusing enough (click on photo to enlarge).

Paris Discovers the 'World of Art' in Set Designs for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

The Eberhard Faber Lectures at the Princeton University Art Museum continue tomorrow, featuring Marian Burleigh-Motley of the Metropolitan Museum of Art speaking on Paris Discovers the 'World of Art' in Set Designs for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

The lecture will be held at 4:30 p.m. and room 101 in McCormick Hall, Princeton University. Admission is free and open to the public.

The series, entitled Russia’s "World of Art" Group in a European Context: A Tale of Three Cities, is cosponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies. The series began last week with St. Petersburg: The Birth of the 'World of Art' and Its Russian and European Roots and concludes on 29 March with Moscow’s Contribution to the "World of Art".

This is one of the many public programs organized in conjunction with the landmark exhibition Mir Iskusstva: Russia's Age of Elegance at the Princeton Museum of Art in Princeton, New Jersey. For further information please call the museum at 609-258-3788.

Previously on Slavs of New York: The World of Art and Russian Culture, Mir Iskusstva: Russia's Age of Elegance and St. Petersburg: The Birth of the "World of Art" and Its Russian and European Roots

Chornobyl + 20: This Is Our Land ... We Still Live Here

Complimenting its current exhibit, The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motif in Ukrainian Folk Art, the Ukrainian Museum opened a new exhibit yesterday, Chornobyl + 20: This Is Our Land ... We Still Live Here.

This multimedia exhibit explores the continuing effects of the 1986 meltdown at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear plant on the lives of residents of Ukrainian regions most heavily contaminated. About 175 photos are featured, along with maps, charts and text panels that put the accident in historical context, describe the clean-up efforts and other steps taken by the authorities in the wake of the disaster. There is also an interactive audiovisual program featuring film clips including interviews with locals, views of the landscape, a religious holiday celebration, and musical performances and craft demonstrations by residents.

The meltdown at Chornobyl began on 26 April 1986 and is the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. More than 160 villages were evacuated throughout the following decade, and more than 160,000 residents were permanently resettled and thousands more voluntarily left. But more than one million people remained, most of them elderly.

The exhibit is the work of curators Professor Myron O. Stachiw of the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, and Serhiy M. Marchenko, a Ukrainian filmmaker and photographer living in Kyiv. The installation was designed by Alfredo Maul of Maul Dwellings, SL, of San Sebastian, Spain.

The Ukrainian Museum is located at 222 East 6th Street between Second and Third Avenues in the East Village. Chornobyl + 20: This Is Our Land ... We Still Live Here runs through 28 May, and The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motif in Ukrainian Folk Art is on view through September.

Previously on Slavs of New York: New exhibit at the Ukrainian Museum

Liběna Rochová

Tomorrow evening at 6:30 p.m., the Czech Center is hosting a special presentation of fashions by Czech desinger Liběna Rochová. Just after Fashion Week this presentation will showcase Rochová's Fall 2006 collection.

The Czech Center is at 1109 Madison Avenue at 83 Street. Admission is free and open to the general public.