#kremlin gala

[somejerkoff]

I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation about Goncharov lately, and I wanted to set the record straight about this fascinating piece of Italian/American cinema history. When I first heard about it, I had a hard time believing Scorsese managed to mount this ambitious epic in the same year as his breakthrough with Mean Streets, and the truth is, he did and he didn’t…

So let’s go back to 1972. After a number of acclaimed shorts, a promising feature debut with Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, and some high-profile editing gigs, Scorsese went the way of so many young directors and helmed a low-budget feature, Boxcar Bertha, for Roger Corman’s American International Pictures. Famously, upon screening the film for his friend and proudly independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, Scorsese had a rude awakening when Cassavetes told him, “Marty, you’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit.” Here the seeds of Goncharov were planted.

Hearing these words in the wake of his fellow film brat Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful work on The Godfather, Scorsese knew his next work would be need to be a simultaneously grand and personal vision. He found the inspiration for his intercontinental saga in the Goncharov trilogy of novels. He managed to assemble a stellar cast—Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, John Cazale—who all believed in the script, but unlike Coppola, he did not have a studio budget. Financially, Scorsese blew his meager funds on some bravura set-pieces—an opening at the Kremlin, a Naples marketplace, and an absolutely stunning clock tower sequence—all gave plenty of bang for their buck, but he wasn’t able to thread them together into a narratively satisfying feature.

Scorsese turned to Coppola, who in turn showed the footage to Robert Evans. Evans did not see any way Paramount could release it. He did, however, arrange a gala screening for a number of television executives with the thought that this expansive story would make for a compelling miniseries. This was pre-Roots, however; miniseries were not the phenomenon they would become. No network was willing to spend the money to back the project. (Little did they know that they would be getting future TV stars Lynda Carter and Henry Winkler in small roles.) Dejected, Scorsese set the footage aside and began work on his smaller-scale but just-as-personal Mean Streets.

This was 1973. Flash-forward to the end of the 1970s and Scorsese was in a very different position. His mid-1970s run of features had established him as one of the leading lights in American cinema, but his fortunes fell upon delivering his ambitious and underappreciated flop, New York, New York, in 1977. With his two grandest undertakings of the decade both deemed failures, Scorsese had no desire to attempt to return to the world of Goncharov as a director. This is where Matteo JWHJ 0715 enters the picture, and why so many sources waffle on which filmmakers deserves the director credit.

Anyone who’s watched Scorsese’s documentary My Voyage to Italy knows that he has long been a fan of JWJH 0715’s work. The two felt immediate kinship upon meeting at the Venice Film Festival in 1979. When Scorsese mentioned the shelved Goncharov footage, JWJH 0715 lit up. The two crafted a plan to resurrect the project in one cocaine-fueled night. Scorsese handed him the footage and took on the role of producer as JWJH 0715 completed his vision.

Scorsese’s original film was not enough for the completed feature. Along with sumptuous new footage shot by Vittorio Storraro for JEJH 0715, Scorsese’s friends and collaborators also lent a helping hand. De Niro agreed to film reshoots (though ironically De Niro’s weight gain for Scorsese’s own Raging Bill led to some incongruous continuity changes within scenes), and Shepherd recorded new dialogue. Sadly, John Cazale had passed away, leading to the unfortunate but ultimately poignant decision to kill off Ice Pick Joe. Additionally, Coppola agreed to lend unused footage from The Godfather films and The Conversation to flesh out some of his sequences. This generous gift yielded enough new footage of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman that their performances were added to the picture.

Keitel had limited availability for reshoots, so Scorsese asked Paul Schrader to lend footage from Blue Collar. Schrader declined, stating that the movie would be better off if he had been asked to complete it instead of just providing scraps. In a recent Facebook post, Schrader admitted that these comments came from a place of jealousy—noting how beautifully Scorsese depicted his characters struggling with their sexualities while Scorsese showed no apparent struggles with his own.

For Shepherd’s sequences, they used footage from Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love, a move that contributed to Goncharov being underseen to this day. Shortly after the premiere of the newly-assembled Goncharov at Cannes in 1982, Bogdanovich claimed that Scorsese took advantage of his grief over Dorothy Stratten’s murder to pressure him into handing over the footage. In a conversation with Henry Jaglom, Orson Welles claimed that this was a “horseshit excuse” and that Bogdanovich told him about the decision well before the tragedy. Nevertheless, Bogdanovich’s belief that the footage was in-bad-faith helped lead to the decades the film spent in legal limbo.

It’s a strange twist of fate that a film that was borne out of Scorsese’s desire to break free from Roger Corman’s style of filmmaking ultimately found itself subjected to some of the same production techniques, particularly the cobbled-together nature, of many of Corman’s features. However, when these cobbled-together pieces happen to be the work of two master filmmakers, incredible performances from some of the best actors of the 1970s, and cinematography contributions from Storraro, Gordon Willis, Bill Butler, and Laszlo Kovacs, it’s no wonder that Goncharov has found a new generation to captivate.

[head-post]

Putin to discuss co-operation with Xi in China

Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a state visit to China on 16-17 May at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss co-operation between the countries, Russian media reported.

The leaders will discuss in detail the issues of comprehensive partnership and identify key areas for further development of Russian-Chinese co-operation. International and regional issues are also on the agenda of the meeting.

Putin and Xi Jinping will attend a gala evening to mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the Russian-Chinese Years of Culture. The Russian president’s schedule also includes a meeting with Premier Li Qiang of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China.

Putin is expected to attend the opening ceremony of the eighth Russian-Chinese EXPO and the fourth Russian-Chinese Forum on Interregional Cooperation. The Russian president will also hold a meeting with students and professors of Harbin Institute of Technology.

The Kremlin confirmed the trip in a statement and said Putin was travelling at the invitation of Xi Jinping. It said it would be Putin’s first foreign trip since he began his fifth presidential term.

Read more HERE

[humanspaceflightday]

Celebration of the Cosmonautics Day On April 12 2023.

The President of Russia attended a gala event to mark Cosmonautics Day 2023 at the State Kremlin Palace.

[dance-world]

Josué Ullate  and Lucia Lacarra - Kremlin Gala 2018 - photo by Niv Novak

[besoindedanser]

Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, Prima ballerina at Staatsballet Berlin 

La Peri, music by Johann Friedrich Franz Burgmüller, choreography by Vladimir Malakhov

Kremlin Gala

Photo by Jack Devant from his Instagram account

[vadreams]

Marianela Núñez - Gamzatti Variation

Kremlin Gala, 2017

[foreverlogical]

President Donald Trump fumed in his remarks to the press last week: “What they’ve done is a disgrace, and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country...”Trump’s fury wasn’t directed at Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections, but instead at the Obama administration’s efforts to investigate the Kremlin’s malign operations. And his account of a phone call earlier in the day with Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests—as the Kremlin quickly inferred—that as Trump confidently wraps up the “Russia hoax,” Putin can be confident Trump’s in his corner, if not in his pocket.There’s Nothing Generous About Putin’s Coronavirus Aid to US

During that phone call, as Trump told reporters, he told Putin the investigation of Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller was a “Russia hoax.” And since Russia is under heavy economic U.S. sanctions for its election-meddling, such a dismissive description would seem a clear signal Trump wants that restrictive regime to come to an end. If there was no meddling and it was all part of a conspiracy by Barack Obama, why would you punish the falsely accused Putin?Trump’s remarks, coming amid a flurry of questions about COVID-19 at a press opportunity with the governor of Texas, had started with a musing about sharing ventilators with Moscow, then Trump pivoted to elaborate on a theme mentioned nowhere in the official readouts of the call by the White House or the Kremlin.“And that was a very nice call,” said Trump. “And remember this: The Russia hoax made it very hard for Russia and the United States to deal with each other. They’re a very important nation. We’re the most powerful nation; they’re a very powerful nation. Why would we not be dealing with each other?”“But the Russia hoax is—absolute, dishonest hoax,” Trump continued. “Made it very difficult for our nation and their nation to deal. And we discussed that. I said, ‘You know, it’s a very appropriate time.’  Because things are falling out now and coming in line, showing what a hoax this whole investigation was. It was a total disgrace. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks. This is just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle.”One of those “things” that are “falling out” is the attempted dismissal of criminal charges against Mike Flynn—Putin’s dinner companion at a gala for the Kremlin propaganda organ RT television in December 2015. Trump’s overtures sounded very good to Kremlin ears. The upending of an investigation into the Russian election interference implies the end of sanctions against the perpetrators, if Trump can work his will on Congress.While the tidbits revealed by the American president were notably absent from the White House and Kremlin readouts, which also omitted any mention at all of the said commentary about Russia’s election interference, the Kremlin did note the “satisfaction” of both presidents at the conclusion of the phone call. Exchanges between the two leaders have become, in fact, unusually frequent in 2020, and Russian analysts have taken notice. Indeed, they have offered up some extremely ambitious predictions, anticipating that the standoff between the United States and Russia eventually will play out bigly in the Kremlin’s favor.

Vitaly Mankevich, international-relations expert and the president of the Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Komsomolskaya Pravda—one of the most popular newspapers in Russia—that “the United States will abandon excessive pressure on Russia, since it does not pose an existential and ideological threat to Trump’s America (unlike the USSR during the Cold War). The White House will probably even try to pull Russia over to the U.S. side, offering investments and lifting sanctions.” Mankevich further predicted “a decrease in American activity in the Baltic states, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.”Perhaps the tastiest bargain of all would be the anticipated handover of Ukraine to the Kremlin, in exchange for Russia’s support of the United States in its brewing conflict with China. Komsomolskaya Pravda concluded: “The United States may give Ukraine to Russia in an exchange for an alliance against China.” While Ukraine obviously is not Trump’s to give, the country is heavily dependent on the U.S. assistance for its very survival. Information revealed during the impeachment proceedings laid bare President Trump’s callous disregard toward Kyiv, combined with his overt longing to cozy up to the Kremlin.  On a larger scale, Vitaly Mankevich predicted the disintegration of NATO and the opportunity for Russia to re-establish a  hold over Eastern Europe unseen since the times of the Soviet Union. Of course, Mankevich emphasized, “this scenario is relevant only if Donald Trump is re-elected for a second term in November of 2020.”The ongoing motivation for Russia’s continued election interference explains why the English-speaking Kremlin-controlled networks have latched on to reports that aim to discredit former Vice President Joe Biden, while also presenting the U.S. democracy as “a sham,” with no one worth voting for. Destroying faith in the U.S. electoral process is one of the most important goals of the Kremlin’s anti-American propaganda. Another aim is to exacerbate the divisions in American society, but Trump is aptly accomplishing that—with or without Russia’s help. Trump’s re-election would provide a bouquet of benefits for the Kremlin and Biden’s considerably higher poll numbers are discussed with concern in the Russian state media.While the English-speaking bullhorns of the Kremlin have zeroed in on Tara Reade’s allegations against the highest-polling presidential candidate, the Russian state media back home quietly acknowledged that the timing of Reade’s disclosures clearly indicates an effort to undermine the candidacy of Biden. During his eponymous evening news show, host Vladimir Soloviev dismissively described Reade’s disclosures as a typical pre-election ploy, designed to erode Biden’s support (crude even by Kremlin standards). But that has not deterred the English-language state media from pushing the Reade accusations in hopes they’ll successfully torpedo Biden’s chances.The main incentive for the Kremlin’s ongoing support of the Trump presidency was eloquently summed up by Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a favored pundit on Russian state television: “Trump is a weak leader—and that is great for Russia. It’s also good for China.” Describing Trump as a synthesis of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin—Russian leaders of the past associated with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the weakening of Russia— Shakhnazarov expressed his hope that Trump would bring about the destruction of the United States of America, akin to what happened to the USSR.But let’s return to the matter of ventilators that segued into Trump’s musings about his phone call with Putin.“I suggested if they need—because we have a lot of ventilators—if they need ventilators, we’d love to send them some, and we will do that at the appropriate time. We’ll send them some ventilators.”Question: “Did he take you up on it? Did he say—”Trump:  “Yeah. We’ll be doing that.”On this matter, the Kremlin’s commentators were far from enthusiastic. The absurdity of buying ventilators from Russia in April, only to offer U.S. ventilators to Russia in May, laid bare the propagandistic nature of such exchanges. And there’s this: Faulty Russian ventilators of the same make and model have caused fires and killed coronavirus patients in at least two Russian hospitals to date. It is unclear whether the potentially faulty Russian ventilators are currently being utilized in American hospitals, or sitting in storage as dormant metaphors of the Kremlin’s Trojan gifts.     

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[lovelyballetandmore]

Vadim Muntagirov, Marian Walter, Timur Askerov, Semyon Chudin in Variations for Four. Music by Marguerite Keogh, choreography by Anton Dolin. Russian premiere. Shot in the State Kremlin Palace (Moscow, Russia) on 15.10.2016, Kremlin Gala 2016. Photos by Jack Devant ballet photography.

[niko-voronin]

After the gala, February 2020 Moscow Kremlin Museum, Russia @karolinaofrussia

Niko waited patiently for his sister’s arrival. Standing in the middle of an empty gallery of the museum the clearing of his throat echoed around the high vaulted ceiling. How many days had died and passed over waiting for Karolina? Too many to count. 

The idea of asking her to arrive on time would never occur to him. It was not necessary. She was worth the wait. A thin smile appeared when the click of heels in the vast space announced the princess arriving. “Karo. Moya malen'kaya zvezda. You survive the gala, this is good.” She survived Valko too. Karo could do so much better. Niko wanted to know about the party but first a kiss to a porcelain cheek. “I have surprise for you. It is in this room. Guess what it is.”

[bountyofbeads]

Russian Oligarchs Are Big Arts Patrons — in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/arts/russia-oligarchs-arts.html

Russian Oligarchs, as U.S. Arts Patrons, Present a Softer Image of Russia

Museums, the performing arts and historical sites like Fort Ross in California, where an old Russian company flag flies, have been the beneficiaries of their gifts.

By Graham Bowley | Published Oct. 6, 2019 Updated 6:02 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 6, 2019 8:40 PM ET |

Vladimir O. Potanin, a Russian billionaire who made his fortune in banking and natural resources, has been a donor and board member of the Guggenheim Museum since 2002. More recently he gave $6.45 million to the Kennedy Center in Washington, which used some of the money to install the “Russian Lounge,” a meeting space, in the performing arts complex created, in part, by Congress. His name is now inscribed on a wall there.

At the New Museum in Manhattan, another wealthy oligarch, Leonid Mikhelson, helped underwrite a 2011 exhibition through his foundation, which is dedicated to the appreciation of Russian contemporary art. Two years later, the museum named him a trustee, a position he held until last year — three years after the company he directs was placed under sanctions by the United States government.

Fort Ross, a California state historic park that commemorates a 19th-century Russian settlement in Sonoma County, was struggling in 2010 when Viktor F. Vekselberg, another oligarch, stepped in to help financially. His foundation continued as a patron until last year, when sanctions were imposed on him and his company, and the Justice Department told the park’s caretakers to stop taking his money.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, rich Russians have emerged as influential patrons of the arts and Western cultural organizations have often been the beneficiaries. Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center are among those who have received gifts from moneyed Russians or the companies they control over the past decade.

Though wealthy patrons have long used the arts to advance their individual tastes and social standing, much of the Russian giving is different. While the oligarchs also promote their personal preferences and support a wide range of cultural activities, they often employ philanthropy to celebrate their homeland, depicting it as an enlightened wellspring of masterworks in dance, painting, opera and the like.

These patrons have been quite public in their philanthropy, and there is little evidence that their donations have been directed or coordinated by Moscow. But they all enjoy good relations with the Kremlin — a prerequisite to flourish in business in Russia — and their giving fits seamlessly with President Vladimir V. Putin’s expanding efforts to use the “soft power” of cultural diplomacy as a tool of foreign policy.

The effect, however cultivated, helps burnish the image of a nation whose aggression in Ukraine and election meddling have led it to be viewed by many as a hostile power.

“When Western publics think about Russia, Putin wants them to think about Pushkin, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky,” said Andrew Foxall, a Russia expert at the Henry Jackson Society in London. “What he does not want Western publics to think about is the actions of his regime that goes to war with its near neighbors.”

The Russian giving, and the strained relations between the countries, has created something of a minefield for American cultural organizations, many of which depend on philanthropic support and embrace shared aesthetic experiences as opportunities for bridge- building. It presents them with an ethical challenge: are they putting themselves at risk, however unwittingly, of helping to promote a one-sided view of a country that the United States is officially sparring with?

Two institutions accepted large donations from an oligarch whose company had been placed under sanctions by the American government. A third took money from a company that had been similarly penalized.

In two other cases, the cultural philanthropy was endorsed by the Russian Embassy, which for years has solicited oligarchs to help it promote Russia in America.

In other instances, from California to Brooklyn, American venues have hosted performances by Russian troupes whose operations are underwritten by companies or individuals under sanctions.

None of the transactions were illegal because the Russian donors were subject to limited sanctions that only restrict access to financial markets, not full blocking sanctions that generally freeze their American assets and bar doing business with a United States business or person. Still, experts said, accepting such donations runs counter to the spirit of United States policy designed to isolate some Russian interests.

“The whole point of sanctions is to prevent access,” said Alina Polyakova, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Yet, because of their wealth, she said, individuals under government sanctions “are still allowed into these high echelons of cultural power.”

One Russian company employed culture to continue interacting with a high-powered American audience, even after it had been put under sanctions.

The company, VTB, a Russian-government-owned bank under limited sanctions since 2014, held two galas at the Kennedy Center. The first, in October 2016, a month before the American presidential election, featured a special performance by stars of the Bolshoi Ballet. The VTB logo decorated both the stage and the uniforms of the wait staff, and VTB’s president, Andrey Kostin, spoke.

Among the people invited were at least two State Department officials, including Daniel Fried, a senior official responsible for sanctions policy who had already been lobbied by representatives of the bank. Mr. Fried, as the Center for Public Integrity first reported, declined the invitation.

“I was not going to the Kennedy Center for a VTB thing and be photographed with them,” he said in an interview. “The optics were terrible. We are not their friends.”

Several of the American arts organizations declined to comment on whether they had given Russians a platform to spin public perception of their country. The Kennedy Center defended hosting the galas underwritten by VTB, describing its role as simply a landlord. “The Kennedy Center rents to all, while providing no judgment on the content or artistic quality of said events,” said a spokeswoman, Rachelle Roe.

But it also accepted a donation from VTB in 2017. The center said it had recently decided it would no longer accept money from the bank since its president, Mr. Kostin, was placed under full sanctions last year.

“The climate has changed since 2016,” said Ms. Roe.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to these Russian efforts, even as the Kremlin is accused of using more insidious methods to sway American public opinion and elections. The United States, of course, also employs cultural diplomacy through a program run out of the State Department whose preachy use of the Voice of America during the Cold War is well established. But several experts said the Russian version is more coordinated, more baldly designed to muddy the discussion at a time when that country is perceived by many to be overly aggressive.

Michael R. Carpenter, a former National Security Council adviser to President Obama, said he had noticed years ago how the oligarchs were using cultural philanthropy to stay in contact with influential American political, diplomatic and business leaders.

“That access can be used to advance your business interests,” he said, “or the Kremlin’s interest.”

The cultural diplomacy of Communism

Russia’s rich traditions in ballet, fine art and orchestral music did not disappear during the days of the Soviet Union. But they became quite insular.

For decades, the production of art was tightly controlled by the state. Censorship was the norm. The Bolshoi toured, of course, but some of its excursions became threadbare affairs, its programming at times chained to ideological themes.

That all changed after the fall of Communism as the wealth concentrated in a powerful set of business leaders fueled an explosion of artistic interest and outreach.

Dmitry Rybolovlev spent $2 billion in a few short years capturing works by the likes of Picasso and Leonardo.

Mr. Vekselberg, an oligarch, and Mr. Kostin, a banker, joined the boards of the Mariinsky Theater and the Bolshoi, and helped, either personally or through their companies, to send them on polished world tours.

The spending evoked an era when 19th-century Russian czars and industrialists were among the world’s most extravagant arts patrons. Some of the newly rich, after forging fortunes in hardscrabble industries like natural resources, followed a patriotic impulse to recapture Russian cultural works smuggled abroad by nobles, sold by the Bolsheviks or otherwise lost after the revolution.

In 2005, Mr. Potanin’s foundation helped finance an 800-year survey of Russian art, from icons to 19th-century paintings, called simply “Russia!” at the Guggenheim. Mr. Putin spoke at the opening.

“Such events,” Mr. Putin said, “are the best and most eloquent way to understand a country that possesses huge humanistic and spiritual potential, a country such as Russia.”

More recently, Mr. Mikhelson, whose company, Novatek, is under limited sanctions, has staged exhibitions of contemporary art, often focusing on Russian artists, through his V-A-C Foundation.

Helen Weaver, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mikhelson’s foundation, said: “The foundation’s work is always about building bridges and fostering understanding through culture.”

Several experts on Russia said that the spending by oligarchs can resemble bouquets to Mr. Putin who is known to smile on efforts to project the national interest abroad.

“That is what you do if you don’t want to do something dirtier,” said Anders Aslund, an analyst at the Atlantic Council. “You are a patron of culture if you are trying to escape tougher demands from the Kremlin.”

A spokeswoman for VTB, the bank under limited sanctions, said in a statement “that the state or its representatives do not influence VTB’s decisions to sponsor museums, theaters, artistic groups. If we get any requests from state representatives, we review them according to standard procedure.”

But the Russian government has made clear, as it said in a 2016 statement of principles, that “‘soft power’ has become an integral part of efforts to achieve foreign policy objectives.” The following year, the Foreign Ministry created a working group of advisers, including government officials and corporate executives, “to coordinate steps to strengthen Russian-American cultural ties, preserve and develop Russian-associated memorial sites and heritage sites in the United States, and implement relevant future projects,” according to a document provided to The New York Times by the Russian government.

Its efforts include the commemoration of a Russian site, Fort Elizabeth, on the island of Kauai, to mark the 200th anniversary of a Russian presence in Hawaii.

Some of the philanthropy was driven by the former Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak. A master networker in Washington, Mr. Kislyak helped arrange Mr. Potanin’s gift to the Kennedy Center, solicited help for Fort Ross and spurred an American philanthropist, Susan Carmel, to create an institute at American University that promotes Russian culture and history.

The ambassador later became  entangled in the controversy over Russian meddling in American affairs. He returned to Moscow in 2017. The embassy he left behind declined to comment further on questions The New York Times posed about Russia’s pursuit of cultural diplomacy.

“If the purpose of your article is ‘to investigate,’ rather than to promote Russian-American cultural ties, I’m afraid we cannot provide you further assistance,” said Nikolay Lakhonin, the embassy spokesman.

Michael McFaul, the American ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, recalled how Mr. Kislyak once told him that he had employed Russian culture as a tool to “get deeper into the fabric of society” in the United States. Mr. McFaul said he made limited efforts to do the same in Russia, once helping to bring through the Chicago Symphony, but never with the kind of resources the oligarchs offered.

“I remember joking with Kislyak when I saw him in Washington that he was able to convince these major business people to make serious investments,” he said.

Several oligarchs, or the companies they control, help underwrite the operations of the Mariinsky Theater, which coordinates cultural activities for several troupes that regularly tour in the West, including the world famous Mariinsky Orchestra. The organization is led by Valery Gergiev, the master conductor and ally of Mr. Putin, who, as head of state, has met regularly with the Mariinsky board.

The oligarchs resist the idea that their spending advances a national agenda.

Petr Aven, for example, leads one of Russia’s largest banks and has contributed financially to exhibitions on Russian art at the Tate Modern and Royal Academy of Arts in London, where he is also a trustee. The companies he helps direct have also helped underwrite exhibitions at museums like the Guggenheim.

But a spokesman for Mr. Aven said “he has not funded or contributed art to any exhibition at the behest of or in coordination with the government of Russia.”

One oligarch’s efforts in the United States

Along the Pacific Coast, a two-hour drive north of San Francisco, visitors to Fort Ross find a 3,400-acre California state park that was once the southernmost Russian settlement in North America.

The park recreates the 19th-century lifestyle of the Russians who scratched out an existence by farming and fur-trading long before California became a state. Visitors tour the stockade, the Russian Orthodox chapel and a windmill like the one used by the settlers. The signs are in English and Russian, and overhead the flag of the Russian company that once ran the settlement often flies.

Some exhibits note the contributions of the Alaskans who joined the settlement as well as the indigenous Kashaya. But when schoolchildren visit, they sometimes dress as Russian settlers, marching with muskets across the park, shouting in Russian, “Levoy. Levoy. Levoy.”

Left. Left. Left.

“We are working hard not to focus just on the Russian era,” said Sarah Sweedler, who runs the Fort Ross Conservancy, a nonprofit that helps operate the site, “but Russia is the reason for the park, after all.”

It’s certainly the reason Mr. Vekselberg, the oligarch, stepped up at Mr. Kislyak’s request to create a private foundation, funded by his company, to help the park. The Russian president at the time, Dmitri Medvedev, attended the signing of the funding agreement with Mr. Vekselberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Over the next eight years, the foundation donated more than $1.5 million to the park, paying for projects like the hiring of a bilingual tour guide.

“The contribution is modest,” said Ms. Sweedler, “and the influence they wield on the program is nonexistent.”

Last year, though, Ms. Sweedler said the Justice Department told the conservancy to stop taking the money. Mr. Vekselberg and his company, Renova Group, had been among the entities slapped with sanctions by the United States Treasury, which cited “a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities,” including its occupation of Crimea, aggression in eastern Ukraine, support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, “attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities.”

Some sanctions are based on behavior, but many companies or individuals, like Mr. Vekselberg, were punished largely because they are viewed as influential supporters of Mr. Putin who benefit from the actions of his regime.

Mr. Vekselberg, who is fighting the sanctions, declined to be interviewed.

Ms. Sweedler views the Russian investment in Fort Ross as a harmless cultural interaction, an important counterpoint to saber-rattling. Others see something more deliberate.

“For me it did raise alarm bells,” said Mr. Carpenter, the Russian specialist in the Obama administration. “Fort Ross was part of a soft power operation.”

Mr. Carpenter said the outpost was important enough to Russia that Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, urged the Americans to turn it into a national park.

Anatoly I. Antonov, the current Russian ambassador to the United States, was exuberant in his appreciation of Fort Ross after a tour last year. “It feels like in some Washington buildings, the air is spoiled with anti-Russian sentiment,” he said. “The air is different here. And people are different, too.”

It is far from the only cultural initiative that Mr. Vekselberg, 62, launched after making his fortune during the rough and tumble privatization of Russia’s aluminum and oil industries in the 1990s.

In 2004, he spent about $100 million to secure the return of a collection of imperial Fabergé eggs and created a museum to showcase them. Though Russia experts do not see Mr. Vekselberg as personally close to Mr. Putin, the effort synced with the president’s mission to bring Russian cultural artifacts back to Russia.

Later, with other oligarchs, he helped build a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, saying it would help paint Russia in a different light.

“The average American has developed this stereotype. They have a very wary approach to Russia, with the story of the evil empire and so forth,” he said at the time. “Americans who come here to work or visit, often for business, and come to this museum will assess what is going on in Russia in a different way.”

Mr. McFaul, the former ambassador, said he views Mr. Vekselberg, whose family owns homes in New York and Connecticut, as one of the more Western-oriented oligarchs. “I do think he considers himself a bridge-builder between the U.S. and Russia,” Mr. McFaul said.

But there have been rough spots.

Last year, agents for the special counsel Robert Mueller stopped Mr. Vekselberg at an airport, checked his electronic devices and sought to question him. Mr. Mueller’s team was interested in Mr. Vekselberg’s contact with Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer. The two men had had a meeting at Trump Tower in January 2017, just before President Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Vekselberg attended the inauguration with his cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen and major donor to the event.

Prosecutors say Mr. Vekselberg is affiliated with Mr. Intrater’s firm, Columbus Nova, and were intrigued by $500,000 in payments the company made to Mr. Cohen for what was described as consulting work.

Mr. Vekselberg has denied being involved in the payments, and said he is only a client of his cousin’s firm. The investigators have not accused either man of wrongdoing.

Among the organizations that have received financial support from Mr. Vekselberg or his company are Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern in London. In a 2017 accounting, a Renova official said the company had spent $13.5 million on “arts and culture” in the nine years ending in 2016.

In many of these settings, the culture being promoted is Russian. Before Renova was hit with sanctions, for example, it helped fund a series of ballets and an opera in 2015 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by the Mariinsky Theater, which the academy described as “the beating heart of Russian culture.”

Mr. Vekselberg’s company was not the venue’s only Russian patron. A few years earlier, the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund, named after the billionaire who then owned the Brooklyn Nets, announced a gift of $1 million to help underwrite an exchange program with the arts organization: “TransCultural Express: American and Russian Arts Today.”

In announcing the gift, Mr. Prokhorov said he was happy to “share some of the contemporary culture of Russia, the place I am proud to call home.”

Catherine Cheney contributed reporting from California and Michael Kolomatsky from New York. Susan Beachy contributed research.

Six Russians Whose Money Has Made Art and Friends in the West

Published Oct. 6, 2019 Updated 2:21 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted October 6, 2019 8:35 PM ET |

These men, personally or through foundations or companies they control, have given to arts organizations in the West and sponsored events that celebrate Russian culture abroad.

Leonid Mikhelson

Chairman and major shareholder of Novatek

GIFTS: Mr. Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation has the goal of promoting Russian contemporary art internationally. He has given to the New Museum, and the Tate Modern in Britain. His foundation helped to finance a 2017 show on Soviet art at the Art Institute of Chicago, which the museum says its own curators developed.

WEALTH: Novatek, which has been under limited sanctions since 2014, is Russia’s largest nongovernment-owned natural gas supplier. He also owns a large stake in Sibur, a petrochemicals company.

Viktor Vekselberg

Founder and principal owner of Renova Group

GIFTS: Mr. Vekselberg, either personally or through his company or foundation, has donated to Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern in London and Fort Ross in California.

WEALTH: Mr. Vekselberg, a billionaire, made his fortune when Russia’s oil and aluminum industries were privatized. He and his company have been under sanctions since 2018.

Vladimir Potanin

Founder and president of Interros

GIFTS: He has been a donor to the Guggenheim Museum since 2002. More recently he gave $6.45 million to the Kennedy Center in Washington.

WEALTH: He made his fortune in Russian banking and natural resources, including a major stake in one of the world’s largest nickel producers.

Petr Aven

Chairman and a principal owner of Alfa Bank and co-founder of LetterOne

GIFTS: He and his companies have sponsored exhibitions of Russian art at the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim. Mr. Aven, a trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, also lent paintings from his collection of Russian art for a show at New York’s Neue Galerie in 2015.

WEALTH: His fortune is derived in part from Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest, and LetterOne, which invests in energy and telecoms, among other sectors.

Andrey Kostin

President and chairman of VTB Bank

GIFTS: The bank he leads has been a major financial supporter of Russia’s Mariinsky Theater, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Eifman Ballet, which have performed at venues across the United States. VTB has also given directly to the Kennedy Center.

WEALTH: Mr. Kostin is wealthy but his power stems from his role with Russia’s second largest bank, VTB, which is state-controlled and has been under limited sanctions since 2014. Mr. Kostin, who has been under personal sanctions since last year, serves on the Bolshoi and Mariinsky boards.

Mikhail D. Prokhorov

Founder of the investment company Onexim Group

GIFTS: He gave $1 million to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2012 for a three-year program of cultural exchanges between the United States and Russia.

WEALTH: A billionaire, he derives his fortune from Russian natural resources and banking. Until recently, he was the majority owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.

[melmothblog]

Ask Responses: MISC

In light of Karl Paquette's retirement from POB, is there an official departure in the Russian theatres that compares to the POB's for departing etoiles? They have confetti and all their peers come onto the stage to bid their farewells, and the audience clap to congratulate them on their career. I get the feeling it's a lot more discrete in Russia? I can't imagine Uliana Lopatinka's farewell if it had been as ceremonious as the French - it may have gone on forever!

Dancers seem to disappear from the Bolshoi very quietly. None of the dancers who retired in recent years (Uvarov, Andrienko, Tsiskaridze, Gudanov, etc.) received so much as a mention on the Bolshoi’s social media or website. Of course in some cases this can be in deference to the dancer’s wishes. The Mariinsky sometimes hold galas to celebrate their retiring dancers (like Yulia Makhalina), but Ulyana Lopatkina opted for a quiet exit. As did Daria Pavlenko. 

I have a feeling that Western and European companies are generally much more jovial and vocal when it comes to celebrating a dancer’s career than their Russian counterparts. 

There seems to be a greater presence of the claque in bolshoi compared to mariinsky. Why is it so and how do dancers generally feel about them? Thank you!

The only dancer I’ve ever heard talk openly about claques (and the paid hecklers) is Tsiskaridze. Understandably, he reviled the practice. From what I gather, the main difference between the two companies when it comes to this sort of things is culture and geopolitical location. 

St Petersburg is seen as a more reserved and an almost aristocratic environment, with the people behaving accordingly. I think the scars left by the blockade should also be taken into consideration. This sort of thing really seeps into the soil and the city’s psyche... This cultural peculiarity is partly why the scandals that happen at the Mariinsky are rarely made public and people generally behave better than their muscovite counterparts.

The Bolshoi, on the other hand, is universally considered the country’s “main” stage and is located next to (and is connected to) the Kremlin, in the middle of Moscow. By virtue of its size and location it is far more susceptible to scandal and general shenanigans.

How is it that Russian ballet academies train dancers so well. When watching exams videos it is like the room is filled with identical beings. They are all perfect. No flaws whatsoever. Is there any secret to the way they train turnout. It amazes me how they all have 180 degrees.

The short answer is: a unified education system and the overall attitude to ballet.

The latter is especially important. I don’t think I can properly explain Russians’ attitude to ballet, art and classical music. These are revered as high art and are very, very valued and respected. It’s a cultural thing. (Most) children who pursue ballet or classical music professionally know from an early age that they will be sacrificing themselves for their art. The end-result is valued above all. Including health. Russian dancers (the really successful ones anyway) are fanatical about their work. Many Soviet dancers likened ballet to religion and theatres to churches, and people like Tsiskaridze are trying to keep this attitude - which sets Russia apart from other counties - alive.

The requirements children have to meet in order to get into a ballet academy in the first place are very high. Aside from being healthy, they need to have very specific (”perfect”) proportions, be very flexible and posses great turnout. There are many other requirements on top of this, but you get the general idea. Academies like BBA and VBA are extremely selective about their candidates.

And then, of course, there’s the training. Russia has a unified ballet training system. This means that all major academies teach the same program, style, etc. This is why Russian dancers are immediately recognisable even if they come from different academies - they share very similar traits. Irina Kolpakova once said that the lack of a unified teaching method is one of the problems with American dancers: if you take dancers from all of the US and try to turn them into a corpse de ballet, you will end up with a dog’s breakfast, because everyone is taught different things.

Lastly, the great masters, who themselves studied under the legends like Vaganova, are religious about transferring the knowledge from generation to generation, ensuring that nothing is lost.

d i s c l a i m e r 

[explorarusia]

El Gran Teatro de Moscú o El Bolshói de Moscú.

Es tanto teatro como compañía de teatro, danza y ópera con sede en Moscú.

El edificio actual fue construido en 1825 y diseñado por el arquitecto Ósip Bové es, después de La Scala, el mayor de Europa.

El Bolshói fue inaugurado el 18 de enero de 1825 con la representación del ballet del catalán Fernando Sor, Cenicienta.

El teatro fue cerrado en 2005 para acometer una ambiciosa restauración y rehabilitación, la más grande de las muchas que ha sufrido en su historia. Una vez iniciada, los técnicos descubrieron que la inestabilidad del edificio era mayor de lo esperado, lo que retrasó y encareció considerablemente el proceso (finalmente unos 500 millones de euros).

Los trabajos intentaron recuperar la acústica original de la sala, que se había perdido en gran medida debido a las sucesivas reformas durante la era soviética.

Se restableció la decoración original de la reconstrucción de 1856, incluyendo trabajos de artesanía especializados.

La capacidad de la sala se redujo a 1740, en lugar de las 2100 que llegó a tener en la etapa soviética, en la que el auditorio se utilizó en algunas ocasiones para actos políticos del Partido Comunista.

La hoz y el martillo soviéticos colgados durante décadas sobre la fachada principal, así como sobre el antiguo palco imperial, han sido reemplazados por el águila bicéfala del escudo original de armas de Rusia.

Durante la reconstrucción, la actividad de la compañía del Bolshói continuó en el Nuevo escenario, habilitado en un edificio aledaño, o en el teatro del Palacio del Kremlin.

La reapertura se celebró el 28 de octubre de 2011, con una función de gala. La nueva temporada comenzó el 2 de noviembre con una polémica nueva producción de Ruslán y Liudmila, de Glinka.

Para más información sobre nuestros tures visite nuestra página Web.

https://www.mimoscutours.com

[reportwire]

Pentagon Moves to Seize Nearly $40K Paid to Michael Flynn for Kremlin Gala

Pentagon Moves to Seize Nearly $40K Paid to Michael Flynn for Kremlin Gala

Newsweek is reporting that the Army will seize $38, 557 that Russian Television (“RT”) paid Flynn to attend a Kremlin Gala, the one in which he sat next to Putin. This picture has been shown all over the world, and its underlying meaning and symbolism only increases by the day: It doesn’t hurt to look back. Consider who is at this table – Putin and his top aides, Michael Flynn (Trump), Jill…

[vadreams]

Winter Dreams (MacMillan) - "Farewell" Pas de Deux (Extract)

Marianela Núñez and Thiago Soares, Kremlin Gala 2016.

[a-romanov-tribute]

House of Romanov Tercentenary dinner menu

'The gala dinner of the Romanov Tercentenary celebration took place at the Grand Kremlin Palace, on May 25,1913. Nicholas II and all members of the Imperial family attended the dinner. Seven hundred dignitaries were invited. Dinner toasts at the Kremlin Palace were accompanied with cannon salute. The dinner was followed by a performance of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Designed by S. Yaguzhinsky, the menu is decorated with the image of the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, the young Michael Romanov. Behind his throne are the black double-headed eagle and the Romanov griffin on a gilded shield. At the foot of the throne, three figures in seventeenth-century Russian dress symbolize wise leadership, military power, and prosperity. The inscriptions read “Truth and Mercy,” “For Tsar and Fatherland,” and  “Abundance of Fruits of the Land.” '

The Dinner

Turtle soup, and soup puree of chicken and asparagus

Pirozhki

Starlet Imperial

Wild Goat Saddle with Garnish

Young Chicken with Truffles

Victoria Punch

Fried Ducks and Poulardes

Cucumber Salad

Asparagus with Sauce

Peaches Cardinal

Parisian Ice Cream

Dessert

Via: The Museum of Russian Art

[cyberdoc84]

#Repost @time with @get_repost ・・・ From the beginning of his 19 years in power, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned his country’s wealthiest men into a loose but loyal band of operatives. In exchange for lucrative deals with the government, or simply protection from the authorities, these #billionaires have gathered contacts at the highest levels of U.S. #politics, high enough to influence policy in the service of the Russian state. “These are cats that like to bring dead mice to the Kremlin,” says Mark Galeotti, a leading expert in Putin’s influence operations at the Prague-based Institute of International Relations. And in the #Trumps, the oligarchs found plump targets. One Russian billionaire hosted Ivanka Trump and her husband, now President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, Jared Kushner, at a gala in Moscow in 2014. Another has links to a $500,000 payment to Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen in 2017. A third ran a propaganda operation that pumped pro-Trump content into the news feeds of millions of American voters. In the heat of the presidential race, a fourth tycoon arranged the meeting where a Russian lawyer offered dirt on Hillary Clinton to Trump’s closest aides. And then of course there was Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with close ties to Putin, whose years of fishing for friends in Washington eventually got the chairman of a presidential campaign, Paul Manafort, on the line. (As part of his guilty plea on Sept. 14 to charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Manafort agreed to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” with the special counsel.) Reviews of legal records and interviews with oligarchs and their associates in Russia and the West show just how far they have gone. They also show how deeply they penetrated the 2016 U.S. presidential contest, and the campaign of Donald Trump. Read this week's full International cover story on TIME.com. Illustration by @obrienillustration for TIME https://www.instagram.com/p/BoCNIIHheXi/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=19xl013sazilj