page_title: Vasyl Avramenko
section_title: Natalka Poltavka
hierarchical_section_title: Vasyl Avramenko / Movie Producer / Natalka Poltavka
caption_attribution_description: English: Film still from "Natalka Poltava." Vasile Avramenko in costume, doffing his hat during a dance sequence.
context_page_description: Vasyl Kyrylovych Avramenko was a Ukrainian actor, dancer, choreographer, balletmaster, director, and film producer, credited with spreading Ukrainian folk dance across the world. Colourful, energetic, imaginative, and, quite often exasperating, he was an impresario greatly reminiscent of The Music Man. For his unparalleled missionary zeal and his love of Ukrainian culture, he is considered by many to be the "Father of Ukrainian Dance".
context_section_description: On the road most of the time, leaving behind his wife with their newly born daughter, with little if anything to live on, so that his wife depended on friends to survive, by 1934, his marriage began to fall apart.  The Great Depression made it hard to earn a living running dance schools.  Avramenko made plans to produce a feature film based on the oldest and most popular Ukrainian operetta, Natalka Poltavka, convinced that it would bring fame and glory to the Ukrainian cause.  He rallied wealthy widows and convinced them that people in their community needed a place to apprentice in film.  The Avramenko Film Company was established in New York City in 1936.  Having raised enough money, twenty-five thousand dollars, to begin production, fortuitously Edgar G. Ulmer, a real Hollywood film director appeared on the scene.  Ulmer had lost favour in Hollywood after running off with the wife of the nephew of Carl Laemmle Sr., who owned Universal Studios.
  Ulmer put together a film crew and rewrote the screenplay.  The musical score was recorded ahead of time at Reeves Sound Studio in New York City.  The set was located on a farm northwest of Trenton, New Jersey.   Ulmer said of Avramenko: "Nothing was impossible for Avramenko… The man was so enthusiastic.  I couldn't say no to him….  He was the spark of everything."   Without a Hollywood distributor, the film company rented theatres at high cost to show the film.  In the end, though an artistic success, the film left Avramenko in further debt.  Koshetz was particularly critical of the film, finding it offensive and tasteless.  Not surprisingly, his review appeared in Svoboda.  It sounded very much like a personal attack.  No doubt Avramenko's personality had got under Koshetz' skin when they had toured together. Koshetz' criticism was not without merit.  Avramenko, despite his rhetoric to develop a Ukrainian film industry, had brought in people and resources from outside the community in order to make the film.  In fairness though to Avramenko, these resources did not exist in the Ukrainian community at that time.  This was the first Ukrainian language film produced in the United States.
caption: Film still, from "Natalka Poltavka."  Vasile Avramenko, in costume, doffs his hat during a dance sequence.
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