Jordan Center for the
Advanced Study of Russia

Tara Wheelwright

Articles by Tara Wheelwright

Countering “byt” with “bytie”: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Balm for Motherhood

Written in 1995, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s “Medea and Her Children” merges “byt” and “bytie” by portraying the spiritual satisfaction found in the everyday.

Televising Soviet Ballet in the Twenty-First Century

On a day when the news was silent about why the stock market had failed to open, and as protests were unfolding in major cities across Russia, watching ballet on TV felt profoundly dissonant.

Firebird: From Slavic Mythology to American Identity

Originally choreographed by Michel Fokine for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1910, Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird” has been restaged many times and remains a popular ballet around the world and especially in the United States.