General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
PARIS — The dancers are torn between body and mind — physically on stage in Paris but in spirit back home in Kyiv.
In other circumstances, the Kyiv City Ballet’s residency at the Théâtre du Chatelet would be a dream come true, but the stranded company of young dancers feels little but heartbreak.
“We are both physically and emotionally exhausted,” Ekaterina Kozlova, the company’s deputy director, told The Associated Press. “Everyone in the ballet is worried about their families, loved ones, friends, colleagues at home. It’s been very difficult.”
The Théâtre du Chatelet, in the heart of the French capital, offered them the stage on Tuesday for the last show of a French tour that has left the company stranded after the war broke out in Ukraine.
The dance director of the Paris Opera along with some of her company’s best joined them for an open class before performing together a medley of ballet classics, with excerpts from Russian composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
Being given the opportunity to train and dance was for many a chance to focus on “something other than the conflict in Ukraine,” Kozlova said.
One of the dancers will be headed to the Ukrainian border in the coming days to pick up her young daughter who was accompanied out of the country.
Only a part of the company was travelling around France performing a shortened version of The Nutcracker for young audiences — most of the dancers in Paris are in their early 20s. Many of the ballet’s star dancers stayed behind, waiting to join their friends after they reached Paris.
“Most of our artists are stuck in Ukraine,” Director Ivan Kozlov told the crowd.
The city of Paris and the ballet community have helped find temporary accommodation for the Ukrainian dancers who say they wish to continue dancing in France and elsewhere. The Chatelet theater offered the entire group a residency, although Tuesday’s last-minute performance is their last for now.
All proceedings from their performances will go to nongovernmental organizations collecting and shipping humanitarian aid to Ukraine and neighboring countries.
Ukrainian dancers have also sought refuge elsewhere. The Romanian National Opera offered six ballet dancers fleeing from the war in Ukraine a chance to work with their ballet corps, and some of them could be performing in a month.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after her mother left it.
NICOSIA - The suspending of asylum applications from Syrian refugees on Cyprus has now been followed by President Nikos Christodoulides saying the island country that’s a member of the European Union can’t take any more in.
WASHINGTON - Although human rights groups have chided Greece’s record in dealing with refugees and migrants, alleging pushbacks the government denied happened, the US State Department said Greece’s record is essentially status quo.
While Greece is hoping to lure more foreign companies - especially American - Greek companies are showing interest in investing in the United States to take advantage of aid for environmental and other projects being offered.
ATHENS - Some 67 suspects said to be hooligan supporters of the Olympiacos volleyball team were taken before a prosecutor to face charges of being involved in the death of a police officer struck with a flare during a brawl outside a stadium.