News: One Orphan at a Time
An international ballet star's new charity helps orphans learn to dance
Ekaterina Chtchelkanova, former soloist with American Ballet Theatre and featured dancer in the movie Chicago, has launched a new dance charity called Open World. It will give orphaned children in Russia the chance to receive dance training.
“When I was a little girl, I wanted to dance more than anything else in the world, and I begged my parents for lessons,” says Chtchelkanova, who trained at the Vaganova Academy and later graduated to join the Maryinsky Theatre (Kirov Ballet). “I was thinking, ‘What if someone was born with this urge like me, but that person had no parents to help? What do they do?”
The questions haunted Chtchelkanova, who’s now a teacher, before she actually began gathering information about displaced children in her homeland. In Russia, there are more than 900,000 orphans and nearly 90 percent of them have living parents who are just unable to care for them.
In September 2010, she visited Orphanage 9 in the Frunzensky district of St. Petersburg. “If you went there, you would not be able to sleep for months,” she says. “Many of the children worry about getting out at 17 and not having a future. The orphanages are like little jails with their own rules and without much love.”
At first, Chtchelkanova thought she might be able to help a few children who wanted to train pre-professionally, which she did. One boy was accepted on full scholarship to train at the Leonid Jacobson State Ballet Theatre, followed by eight more children. But soon, the mission grew. “We wanted to give every child an opportunity and the possibility to improve their lives,” Chtchelkanova says.
Since it was difficult logistically to chaperone many children off-site, she decided to teach classes at the orphanage. Within two weeks, the staff began noticing changes in the children—not just physically, but mentally and psychologically. They were smiling more, they could concentrate better and they were happier. This November, Franco De Vita, principal of ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and Raymond Lukens, who teaches in the school and also ABT’s National Training Curriculum, will be heading to St. Petersburg with Chtchelkanova to introduce the first two levels of ABT’s teacher-training course to the teachers there. ABT has agreed to do this work for Open World for free.
“The Vaganova Academy training does not start until age 10, but now in Russia, there are many private schools and teachers working with children even younger than 5,” Chtchelkanova says. “But unfortunately there aren’t many with a professional approach. The ABT curriculum is scientifically based and talks about the health of a child—not only physical development, but mental and psychological development as well.”
She has also assembled a dedicated group of ballet stars to support her organization. Among them are Susan Jaffe, Natalia Makarova, Alessandra Ferri, Vladimir Malakhov, Uliana Lopatkina, Julio Bocca and David Hallberg. They’ve aided her by lending their ears and responding with advice, ideas and encouragement.
“As a child, going to ballet class allowed me to feel a sense of joy, confidence, creativity and discipline that gave me an anchor in my young, tumultuous life,” says Jaffe, now a ballet mistress with ABT. “What Ekaterina is doing for the Russian orphan community is a great gift.” DT
Photo: Chtchelkanova working with one of the orphans (courtesy of Ekaterina Chtchelkanova)
