Category: Art & Theater

Ukrainian ballet tour comes to New Hampshire

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

The Grand Kyiv Ballet Company was forged through the crucible of two crises. In 2014, Russia occupied Eastern Ukraine, forcing dancer Oleksandr Stoianov and his ballerina wife Kareryna Kuhkar to move to Kyiv. Once there, Stoianov formed a ballet company consisting solely of his fellow countrymen and women.

“Before this we worked with the Russian companies, promoting the Moscow Ballet or the Russian Ballet,” Stoianov said in a recent phone interview. “Many people didn’t know that they were about 50 percent Ukrainian. It was my main idea to create the Grand Kyiv Ballet with a Ukrainian name, and with Ukrainian dancers.”

In 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced another turning point. When the war began, Stoianov and Kuhkar were performing across Europe. They quickly put together a solidarity tour in France and Scandinavian countries, along with working to get dancers and students to safe places.

Government officials, including Scandinavian royalty, attended performances. Ballet became a voice for grief, resistance and national identity.

“We did speeches from the stage about weeping for our country,” Stoianov recalled. “It was a most difficult and terrible time.”

Theaters in Ukraine were closed. Jobs disappeared overnight, and for dancers, life without rehearsal and performance is unimaginable. Many were young, only in their teens, and forced to start from zero in foreign countries. Others were caring for children or elderly parents. Homes were destroyed, and stability vanished.

Some paid a much higher price. Oleksandr Shapoval, who’d danced with Stoianov and Kuhkar, volunteered for service and died in September 2022. Artem Datsishin, another principal dancer from Ukraine’s National Opera, died from injuries sustained from Russian shelling.

In response, larger and more frequent tours were created to provide work, income and purpose for displaced performers. Its scale has grown steadily and adapted to shifting challenges. The company is now a global presence, appearing across Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and more recently China.

Each tour and performance reinforces the visibility of Ukrainian culture on the world stage.

Stoianov, Kuhkar and their two daughters now live in Seattle. Stoianov oversees Grand Kyiv Ballet’s many projects, like two upcoming New Hampshire stops. Giselle, with principal dancers Victor Tomashek and Ekaterina Malkovich, will be performed in Nashua on Jan. 22, and Swan Lake is at Portsmouth’s Music Hall Jan. 25.

These days, the two dance infrequently. An injury stopped Stoianov in 2024, but he hinted, “perhaps a grand return is still ahead” on the company’s website. In the interview, he shared that a world tour of the ballet Carmen will happen next year. “We’ll start class and rehearsals this summer, and then in 2027, we’ll say goodbye to everybody from the stage.”

Giselle is a tale of love, deception and betrayal. Malkovich said in a late December Instagram post that it’s among her favorites to perform.

“When the curtain falls, you leave the stage not tired, but drained,” she wrote. “It’s a ballet after which you don’t want to say anything because there’s nothing left to say.”

Stoianov agrees, adding that its themes resonate with audiences. “All people feel sometimes in their lives in a situation like Giselle, a young girl who was in love, was betrayed and became crazy,” he said. “I’ve seen this ballet a thousand times and my eyes still become wet — but they are happy tears.”

Grand Kyiv Ballet presents Giselle
When: Thursday, Jan. 22, 7 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $46.75 and up at etix.com
Sunday, Jan. 25, 4 p.m. Grand Kyiv Ballet presents Swan Lake at The Music Hall, Portsmouth, themusichall.org.

Featured photo: Giselle. performed by The Grand Kyiv Ballet. Courtesy photo.

Moth & Wren Handwork Studio now open in Manchester

A few months ago, a new yarn shop opened on Bridge Street in Manchester. But owner Shannon Welsh envisions Moth & Wren Handwork Studio as more than a store.To begin 2026, for example, she launched Dry January: Knitters Edition to encourage makers to pick up and finish their existing works-in-progress.

While it may cause less yarn-buying in the short term, Welsh believes it reflects the shop’s deeper mission, of community. Most crafters can empathize with a pile of half-finished projects, each carrying both potential and guilt. She aims to create a welcoming space for people to meet, stitch together, and complete them, among other things.

“What we’re trying to promote is not just selling stuff retail,” she said by phone recently. “That’s less than half of it.”

Science supports the idea that when people become immersed in a hobby they often find an escape from daily pressures, Florida psychologist Patricia Dixon told Good Housekeeping magazine last March. “Participating in a shared interest can lead to meaningful social interactions, enhancing feelings of belonging and connection,” she said.

The story cited a resurgence of “cozy pursuits” like knitting, bird-watching and gardening, with a shared name that Welsh heartily agrees with. “Grandma hobbies are in,” she said. “When we are having mental health issues, if we’re anxious or depressed, or feeling stuck, the worst thing to do is be alone with that.”

Moth & Wren’s soft opening last November was shaped by practical realities — permits, renovations, even waiting for the heat to be turned on. During this period the shop opened its doors mainly to friends and local stitching groups, creating an opportunity to listen and learn.

Key to this phase was understanding the kind of projects people were interested in doing.

“Are they knitters or crocheters, do they do embroidery or mending? That’s a big part of it when you’re making a space for a community,” she said. “It’s not just stocking it up, it’s stocking it up with things that people want.”

The shop plans to offer a range of classes focused on foundational skills and specific techniques, like how to knit, how to master certain stitches, and project-based workshops, with participants working on the same item over multiple sessions. A workshop to make Sailor Slippers happens Jan. 23. “People can buy kits at the shop,” Welsh said.

For now Moth & Wren is only open on weekends, but by the end of January the goal is to expand hours to include two evenings per week: one for a free stitch-along and another dedicated to a class or workshop. Welsh plans for the schedule to rotate depending on interest and demand.

Outreach is also important. Monthly Sip and Stitch events are held on the fourth Wednesday of each month at To Share Brewing, creating a relaxed, social setting for makers. Every Saturday morning, a stitching group meets at Honey Cup Café and Tea Room next door — a natural partnership that blends tea, conversation and crafting.

Aware that fiber arts are expensive, Welsh also aims to be economically inclusive. She’s working on a “D-stash wall,” for makers to bring in yarn from skeins they no longer plan to use, and sell them on consignment. This allows other makers to purchase quality yarn at a lower price, while the original owner recoups some of their investment.

Another effort, inspired by traditional little free libraries, is The Fibrary. At it, people can swap drop off unwanted supplies and take others at no charge; Welsh developed it with her daughter. There are also plans to use it for charity knitters, “so if people have blankets or hats or something they want to distribute to the community they could drop that off.”

Of course, there’s plenty of yarn for sale, along with knitting needles, crochet hooks, books and gifts for makers.

The store’s name comes from Mary Oliver’s poem “Messenger,” a favorite of Welsh’s. “The last line [asks], ‘How do we live forever; how do we tell the world?’ The line about the moth and the wren is about being grateful — for having a body, being in this life, and giving gratitude for living.”

For her, it ties to the idea of people crafting for hundreds of generations.

“When we make something with our hands, we’re connected to them as well,” Welsh said. “We’re connected to our ancestors … that’s how they’ve lived forever through us, through teaching us their skills and passing those on to our children.”

Moth & Wren
When: Open Saturdays & Sundays, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Where: 154 Bridge St., Manchester
More: mothandwren.com

Featured photo: Shannon Welsh at Moth & Wren. Courtesy photo.

Popular game and movie merge with drag at BNH Stage event

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Get a Clue, an upcoming event at BNH Stage based on the popular board game and movie, is equal parts cabaret, costume party and murder mystery. It’s the latest from Free Range Revue, a monthly series that began during Concord Pride Month in 2023 and features drag, burlesque and other performances.

The interactive experience is the work of Journee and Etienne LaFond, one of many the two life and creative partners have collaborated on since coming to New Hampshire eight years ago. Among their other endeavors are the horror anthology podcast “Witchever Path,” acting, and live-action role playing.

“People have the opportunity to come in character and costume, solve a mystery, and most importantly, interact with each other in this little world that we’re all creating together,” Journee said of Get a Clue during a joint interview with Etienne. “What we love to do is try and immerse people as much as possible.”

Etienne agreed. “We’re very steeped in creativity,” they said. “One of the things that we do really well as partners is one of us will say, ‘What if this existed?’ and the other respond, ‘Well, this is how we can make that exist.’ That’s exactly what happened with Get a Clue.”

An ensemble of eight “Draglesque” entertainers will be both on stage and on the main floor, made up as the “Clue Manse” murder scene. They’ll mingle with audience members, providing pieces of the puzzle to help solve the mystery before the final curtain. Raffles and other activities will also take place.

Journee will perform, using their stage name Sybil Disobedience. The moniker was recently chosen, though Journee has done drag performing for more than a decade. “I wanted a name that was inclusive of the values that I hold dear in terms of challenging the status quo,” they said, “but also one fostering my sense of what is right, and what is justice.”

The event is 18+. “Drag and burlesque can be sensitive; people are putting their art out there,” Journee explained. “We really want to make sure we have an audience that can be prepped for that.”

That said, the aim is for upbeat and uplifting. That’s a big reason why Journee became Chief Officer of Concord Pride and began planning events to serve the effort. “It’s so important for the queer community to have a moment that is not only recognizing our presence but is celebratory of our presence,” they explained.

Journee and Etienne are grateful for the Capitol Center’s willingness to host their events.

“I think that we’ve been really lucky to be welcomed into such a beautiful venue with a great team behind it,” Journee said. “It feels like they take really seriously their mission of including as many different aspects of the overall New Hampshire community as possible, so we’re really excited to be a part of it.”

When they began staging events, Journee told a Concord journalist that the aim was “to find and foster a community for queer people and people of color,” with extra motivation coming because “I knew I could spend my energy trying to get Concord a little bit further along those lines.”

Three years later, they continued, “I definitely feel like there’s still work to be done, which is why we’re still doing this in a lot of ways, but I definitely think that we’ve moved the needle in that at the very least people know that in Concord there is a home for queer people.”

The steadily building support is also heartening. “I’m really proud to say that one of the things that we constantly hear at the Free Range Revue is, ‘I look forward to this because I know there’s community. It feels safe and welcoming. I feel like I belong.’ … I really can’t ask for more than that.”

Free Range Revue – Get a Clue
When: Friday, Jan. 9, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $31 at ccanh.com / 18+

Featured photo: Photo courtesy of Free Range Revue.

3S Artspace concludes its 10th year

When it opened to the public in 2015, 3S Artspace got its name in reference to three spaces: art, music and food. That later evolved into three senses, Executive Director Beth Falconer recalled recently, “but then everyone was like, ‘It’s more than three senses’ — and we don’t want to be limited to three spaces.”

Later, the rule of three would reflect the years before, during and after the pandemic. To mark the Portsmouth gallery’s 10th anniversary, they’re harkening back to an exhibit that happened near the end of its first phase. “Third Space” is three curated environments with multifaceted artwork, music and a dose of the spirit that drives 3S Artspace.

Works by regional artists including Jess Dickey, Terry Golson, Aurora Robson and Adrienne Elise Tarver fill “The Garden,” a tropical answer to wintry outside temperatures. It’s curated by 3S board member Emily Leach, who was inspired by trips with her then-small children to Wentworth Greenhouses in Rollinsford.

“We’d breathe the warm air, explore the lush plants, and wonder at the living art sculptures they create,” Leach recalled on 3S’s website. “I designed this room to bring me back to that time and give families a way to experience that same feeling through beautiful and innovative works of art.”

Curated by documentarian, photographer, ski designer and board member Harrison Buck, the “Après Ski Lounge” has works by Buck in collaboration with tattoo artist Heather Quinn, Parlor Skis and Dana Schultz. Tracing Buck’s creative path, it’s called “a love letter to the natural world and a conduit for human connection, design experimentation, and storytelling.”

Art and the Seacoast’s buoyant music community join together in “The Listening Room.” It features posters that papercutting artist Dylan Metrano created for the Diaspora Radio concert series at Portsmouth’s Press Room, and vinyl records playing songs from the iconic albums that inspired them.

Metrano is also a musician and a chocolatier; he runs La Nef Chocolate in Mohegan, Maine, with his wife, a fellow artist. He approached Diaspora Radio creator Stu Dias after their first show, a performance of Music From Big Pink by The Band in September 2021, and offered to do a woodcutting poster for the next concert.

“It was Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On,” Metrano said in mid-December. “They’d used the actual album cover for their poster, and I thought I could do something a little more creative … I didn’t know that it would go on for years and years. I just wanted to do it.”

His distinctive interpretations became synonymous with the event and have been the subject of a few exhibitions, like one at Ceres Bakery that ran last October and November. It included two of his favorites, The Whites Stripes’ Elephant and his first one of Marvin Gaye. Both are among those on display at the 3S exhibit, which runs through Jan. 25.

“Third Space”
When: Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., through Jan. 25
Where: 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth
More: 3sarts.org
Also Friday, Jan. 2, 5-8 p.m. during Portsmouth Art ’Round Town

Featured photo: Diaspora Radio Poster by Dylan Metrano.

A tough year is remembered for great art

The New Hampshire arts world wasn’t greeted by upheaval as 2025 dawned, but it came soon enough. After DOGE took a sledgehammer to the federal budget, canceling grants already budgeted, the New Hampshire House voted away the state’s Council on the Arts in the spring, though one employee managed to remain.

All this chaos didn’t keep New Hampshire’s arts community from producing moving works, from theater to visual art and classical music. On the latter front, however, the search for a successor to outgoing Symphony NH Music Director Roger Kalia was interrupted, as funding issues roiled the organization. Five finalists announced at the end of March and were due to perform for the public during the 2025-2026 season. However, two of the performances have been postponed to the 2026-2027 season. Along with that, Executive Director Deanna Hoying took a personal pay cut, and some staff were moved to reduced hours, according to a patron letter on Dec. 18.

“We are scaling back certain production elements [and] launching a bold plan to strengthen our internal capacity and build sustainable revenue for the future,” the letter continued.

“I hate the word pivot, but we have to pivot again,” Hoying said in a Dec. 23 phone chat. “It’s not like COVID, but we need to meet where our revenue is. Our Christmas Pops concert had lower ticket sales. Charitable gaming is down, giving is down, so we have to re-scale ourselves to see what our community needs. What gets our audience excited? The patrons that have stuck with us are extraordinarily important, I need to say that, but we don’t have the margins some larger organizations have.”

In Portsmouth, the multidisciplinary 3S Artspace marked its 10th year with a special installation, Christina Watka’s “Noticing Light.” Watka leveraged the big gallery space’s wall of windows and plentiful light. “I decided to place this large installation exactly where the band of light curves around the room and then shoots through the entire thing,” she said.

Theatre Kapow’s season-long “community conversation” continued with a production of Every Brilliant Thing in Concord and Meredith. Director Emma Cahoon said of the challenging, interactive play that “throughout, the audience is relied on quite heavily to make the story actually happen.”

Cahoon also directed Romeo & Juliet for Saint Anselm College’s Shakespeare on the Green series, a collaboration with Manchester dance troupe Ballet Misha, led by Amy Fortier, that’s become a summer highlight. The pairing, Cahoon said, provided “a third, middle ground” to unify Shakespeare’s dance and drama.

Other solid productions in 2025 included Clint Eastwood’s movie The Bridges of Madison County redone as a musical in April by Manchester Community Theatre Players, October’s immersive whodunit Southern Fried Murder, part of Majestic Theatre’s 35th season, and Bedford Off Broadway’s regional premiere of the delightful comedy Icehouse in November.

In early December the semifinalists for the New Hampshire Theatre Awards were announced; the awards ceremony takes place Jan. 31 at Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts. Actorsingers, Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative, The Village Players, Nashua Theatre Guild and Milford Area Players all received multiple nominations.

The Currier Museum of Art exhibited five large figures from Ann Agee’s “Madonna of the Girl Child” series in March. The works were a feminist attempt to reclaim the Madonna figure, Agee said, as a symbol of not just motherhood but equality, showing that women and girls deserve the same hopes, dreams and opportunities as their male counterparts.

In the cinema world, the Jewish Film Festival in March offered a rich and varied slate of 15 movies at locations across the state. They included Debra Messing’s documentary October H8te, the Tribeca Audience Award winning comedy Bad Shabbos, and Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, about the singer/songwriter who penned “Society’s Child” and “At Seventeen.”

Granite Orpheus, a movie that took a decade to complete after most of it was shot in 2015, showcased Concord against the backdrop of the classic Greek myth amidst that year’s Market Days celebration. Inspired by the ’60s film Black Orpheus, it featured many local musicians, and offered a look back at a city then in transition. Granite Orpheus will be screened at BNH Stage in Concord on Saturday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m.

The gallery scene remained lively throughout the year. Glimpse Gallery in Concord hosted regular events featuring local artists. In Nashua, ArtHub returned in a new downtown location, after the pandemic torpedoed its original plans to open. The city also hosted its annual sculpture symposium, with artists working for three weeks as the public watched.

Manchester’s Mosaic Art Collective hosted the Halloween-centric” Exquisite Corpse.” It explored the idea that “art happens at the point of juxtaposition” and included a wide range of fun activities to go with what Gallery owner Liz Pieroni termed the many works of “creepy, weird art.”

It all added up to an arts community that remained resilient in a challenging year.

Upcoming arts happenings in 2026

Theater
Actorsingers Company’s production of the Stephen Sondheim/Andrew Furth musical comedy Company runs Jan. 9-11 at Nashua’s Center for the Arts.
Theatre Kapow’s What The Constitution Means to Me, written by a teenager who won a national debate competition on the topic, runs for two weekends beginning Feb. 6 at Winnipesaukee Playhouse in Meredith and Concord’s BNH Stage.

Visual Art
“Third Space,” at 3S Artspace through Jan. 25, transforms their Main Gallery “into a sanctuary of creativity, connection, and comfort during the holiday and winter season,” and includes works by papercutting polymath Dylan Metrano.
“Embellish Me: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth & William Roth” is at the Currier through March 15.

Classical Music
Symphony NH Music Director finalists perform with Adam Kerry Boyles’ Bernstein’s Legacy March 7 and Tianhui Ng’s New Hampshire Passions April 18. The Symphony is also planning a chamber concert led by its musicians on March 28 at Keefe Auditorium.

Featured photo: Granite Orpheus. Courtesy photo.

Nashville’s Celts bring Christmas show to New Hampshire

Unlike many purveyors of his genre, Ric Blair, who leads The Celts, wasn’t born in Ireland, though he has family roots there and in Scotland. Rather, the music found him, while he was studying jazz and classical at Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, and it took hold.

A friend persuaded Blair to take a day off from the rigors of studying and check out a traditional Irish band playing a show downtown.

“We walked in the door, and people were literally dancing on the tables,” he recalled by phone recently. “And immediately every cell in my body was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’”

Celtic music would weave its way into the Christian music albums Blair released starting in the mid-1990s. Around 20 years ago he launched an early iteration of Christmas With The Celts in churches around the country. The shows were a unique blend of ancient carols, traditional holiday songs, and modern tunes given an Irish twist.

In 2011 PBS broadcast a Celts performance filmed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, and their holiday show became a national phenomenon. Since then the group’s name has changed a few times. First it was the Ric Blair Band, then The Celts, then the Nashville Celts. A few years ago they finally switched back to The Celts.

“We don’t know who we are; we like to keep the customers on their toes,” Blair said with a laugh. “Upon the advice of our booking agency, we made it official. They were like, ‘People are easily confused — is it country or is it Irish music with the Nashville Celts?’ We said, ‘Well, it’s a little bit of both. Just tell them the Celts.’”

These days the show offers a bit of everything, like traditional Irish dancers, some of whom are recruited locally. An area youth choir is usually at every tour stop, and there are plenty of jokes. “The quick Irish wit is a big thing in Irish culture,” Blair said, along with “the ability to laugh and not be so overly sensitive that we can’t laugh at ourselves.”

The music, of course, remains front and center, and it’s the most eclectic element of a Celts performance. For the holiday show there are songs not normally associated with the traditional Irish canon, like John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” done with a reel.

“I’ve always been a Beatles fan, like millions and billions around the world, and it just seemed to me to be a good song to kind of unify everybody,” he said. “The people that were around when The Beatles first started, and the children that don’t know who they are.”

Every year, Blair and his band strive to add new touches and fresh numbers to a show that for many fans is now a holiday tradition. He hinted at a new addition that doesn’t come from anyone’s Christmas carol book but seemed to him to be ripe for the Irish touch and a seasonal role. It’s a well-known hit from an English rocker popularized in a late 1980s movie and an accompanying music video.

“There was just a moment that hit me, where I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is a perfect Christmas song,’” Blair said. “Just because of the lyrics, as far as getting to the message of Christ’s birth. It’s so fun to perform.”

Some of the best moments come when The Celts perform carols that are hundreds of years old. Even those are done in a decidedly untraditional manner.

“We have a song called ‘Wexford Carol’ that goes back to the 1600s, or 1500, even earlier than that. We’ve composed almost an EDM version of that.”

The band coming to New Hampshire for two shows, the first Dec. 19 at Derry’s Stockbridge Theatre and the second Dec. 23 at the Colonial in Laconia, consists of Blair, bassist Jimmy Sullivan, David Rollins on drums, and two fiddlers, each doing double duty. Grace Broadhead also sings, and Kira Doppel is a dancer.

Finally, multi-instrumentalist Patrick D’Arcy was a founding member of Flogging Molly and is a longtime collaborator of Blair’s, who called him “one of the best pipers in the world.” D’Arcy was lurking during the interview, and Blair deferred to the native Dubliner when asked why Irish music is so popular with American audiences.

“Because it’s so brilliant,” D’Arcy exclaimed, and continued. “They love it, and it’s not anything to do with their culture or family history. It’s way more an international thing now [even if] it will always be from Ireland. And it represents a return to simpler things as well. I think people like that at Christmas.”

Christmas With The Celts
When: Friday, Dec. 19, at 7 p.m.
Where: Stockbridge Theatre, 5 Pinkerton St., Derry
Tickets: $33 and up at pinkertonacademy.org
Also appearing Tuesday, Dec. 23, at 7:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $43 and up at etix.com

Featured photo: Celts Christmas. Courtesy photo.