Tag Archives: dance

Take Me To The River!

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Late 1950s was an inter­est­ing epoch for the Soviet Union. The death of Stalin was like a begin­ning to a new era, “the Thaw” of Khrushchev, the very first signs of the Cold War and the famous Ful­ton speech of Churchill — all of those were the signs of uneasy times com­ing up. But just before the Iron Cur­tain fell heav­ily, Rus­sia was the place to visit — and we are very grate­ful to the Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­phers who took plen­ti­ful pho­tos for us.

So we are going to make a 50 year leap into the past to the mid-Russia region of the Volga river — here, the sparkly brand new ships were mak­ing their first cruises. So — full throttle!

Krylov ship capt palkin 322x500 Take Me To The River!

Cap­tain Palkin on a Maiden Voy­age of Krylov Ship. 1958.

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Calendar of 1964: Us and Them.

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An old cal­en­dar of 1964 pic­tur­ing a set of remark­able cit­i­zens of the world: a Soviet per­son next to its Amer­i­can coun­ter­part. Sadly there is no anno­ta­tion left to fig­ure what the mes­sage was — infor­ma­tive, pro­pa­gan­dist or other, so the faces below are torn out of con­text. But it is still nice to have a look at some Soviet artist’s work.

It would have been a brief post, so we thought we’d include the major achieve­ments of these great men.

001w26gh1 370x500 Calendar of 1964: Us and Them.

Movie Pro­duc­ers: Sergey Eisen­stein & David W Grifith

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Good Soviet Kids Go to Heaven? Nope, They Go to Artek!

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198 500x348 Good Soviet Kids Go to Heaven? Nope, They Go to Artek!

Kids in the tra­di­tional uniform.

The most famous PR image of the pio­ne­ria of the Soviet Union was a sum­mer vaca­tion camp sit­u­ated in the Crimea (Ukraine), next to Gurzuf town. Founded as a sana­to­rium for the kids suf­fer­ing and recov­er­ing from the TB by the Russ­ian Soci­ety of the Red Cross, it first opened doors in 1925, June 16th, accom­mo­dat­ing about 80 kids from Moscow and the near­est Ukrain­ian towns.

Then it was just a step ahead of a basic camp­ing ground, with kids sleep­ing in tents out in the for­est. How­ever, it grew rapidly until in early 1930s a few per­ma­nent build­ings were built. It was then Artek started work­ing all year round due to its mild Mediterranean-like climate.

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The Swan Song of Mikhail Baryshnikov

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It doesn’t mat­ter how high you lift your leg. The tech­nique is about trans­parency, sim­plic­ity and mak­ing an earnest attempt

Says Mikhail Barysh­nikov, the famous dancer, actor, pro­ducer and pho­tog­ra­pher — a tal­ent for whom the USSR was not big enough.

bar frst 500x402 The Swan Song of Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Barysh­nikov

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Dirty Dancing Soviet Style

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Just like any­where else in the world, the Soviet young­sters wanted to social­ize, to lis­ten to the music and to dance. The night­clubs were unheard of – any­thing of that kind would have been announced as pro­mot­ing debauch­ery or morally wrong lifestyle habits. So the best one would hope for were the dis­cothe­ques – the spe­cial dance occa­sions, orga­nized by the offi­cials on a weekly basis. They always had a des­ig­nated super­vi­sor – a school prin­ci­pal or a city coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive in charge.

first 478x500 Dirty Dancing Soviet Style

A Soviet dis­cotheque, most likely late 1960s.

Often enough, espe­cially in the small cities, these dance events were the only source of enter­tain­ment. Movies were scarce and arrived in towns infre­quently; the cir­cus would visit once a year; and libraries just didn’t do it.

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