Russia and the UK are teaming up to showcase the best of each
country’s cultural heritage during 2014.
Events heading to Russia, programmed by the British Council, include a
celebration of Shakespeare and a major retrospective of Young British
Artists.
UK highlights include a visit from the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra
and a Kazimir Malevich show at Tate Modern.
The UK-Russia Year of Culture will culminate in a London display of
rare items from the Russian space programme.
The Russia’s Space Quest exhibition at the Science Museum in October
will feature artefacts that have never been allowed out of Russia
before.
Speaking during the programme’s launch in London on Thursday, Mikhail
Shvydkoy, President Putin’s special envoy for international cultural
cooperation, said British culture is “very important and very popular”
in Russia and he hoped the project would create “new trust” between
the two countries,
“We have a very long history. A lot of misunderstandings, between
states, between special institutions etc etc,” said Mr Shvydkoy.
“So the culture must create a new mutual understanding between us.”
The programme of events will run for the whole year but the official
launch will be in April, as British film director Peter Greenaway
curates The Golden Age of the Russian Avant-garde at Moscow Museum
Manege.
It will animate more than 400 masterpieces from Russian museums and
private collectors, with Greenaway’s video installation due to return
to London later in the year.
Other highlights heading to Russia from the UK include Akram Khan’s
iTMOi (In the Mind of Igor), which was originally performed at
Sadler’s Wells to mark the 100th anniversary of Russian composer
Stravinsky’s groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring, and The
Barbican’s Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style.
Mr Shvydkoy said Bond was “very popular” in his country, despite many
of the baddies hailing from Russia.
“James Bond [is a] mythological figure for us. Even when fighting
against Russian Secret Services, we look to this for fairytales,” he
said.
“But this hero, this style of behaviour is very Russian, very macho.”
The UK will host performances from the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra
and The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Musical Academic
Theatre, one of Russia’s leading theatres, with more than 90 years of
history.
Other events programmed by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for
the UK include a performance by the 600-year-old Sretensky Monastery
Choir at London’s Kensington Palace.
A UK theatre season will take productions from seven British theatres
including the Young Vic, Royal Shakespeare Company and Scottish
Ballet, supported by the Chekov International Festival.
Dressing the Screen: The Rise of Fashion Film will be Russia’s first
ever exhibition of fashion in and on film, bringing together work by
some of the world’s most innovative fashion designers and film-makers
from the past 75 years.
Screenings of Hitchcock’s early works, The London Philharmonic
Orchestra’s performance of Britten’s War Requiem and an exhibition of
Wedgewood pottery will also travel to Russia.
Early works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sam Taylor-Wood will form
part of Russia’s first major retrospective of the YBA movement in
September 2014 at the Ekaterina Foundation.
On UK soil The Tate Modern will host a groundbreaking exhibition of
Russian artist Malevich’s work, the first major Malevich retrospective
for almost 25 years.
“Historically the relationship between the UK and Russia has had its
ups and downs,” said Peter Charow, vice president of BP Russia, which
is sponsoring the project.
“Ironically the periods when the two countries have co-operated most
successfully have tended to be in times of war.”
Mr Charrow continued: “We have a chance now to break this cycle and to
make a contribution to better understanding between the peoples of
Russia and the United Kingdom, in peacetime and on the basis of
culture, not war.
“Both the UK and Russia enjoy incredibly rich cultural heritages and
these provide limitless opportunities to bring the two nations closer
together.” – BBC Entertainment
