while in the custody of the morality police had saddened everyone and was being investigated with transparency. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. a few days ago, oleksandr shapoval, one of ukraine s leading ballet dancers, was killed while serving with the ukrainian army, fighting the russian invasion. art and culture are not immune from the impact of war. my guest today knows that well. alexei ratmansky is a world renowned choreographer, with roots in both russia and ukraine. once director of the bolshoi ballet in moscow, he is now putting on a special production of giselle with the united ukrainian ballet to show the world ukrainian culture lives on. has ballet become a battleground? thank you very much. it s an honour to be here. we re delighted to have you here. you are here in london because you are mounting this extraordinary set of performances of giselle, performed by ukrainian dancers. how can you go about putting on a performance wi
how many killed, how many are refugees, you know, this kind of thing. and what was their response to facts? silence. or, let s not mix politics and art. we re doing art and we want to concentrate on that. well, that s an interesting point. i just want to ask you whether you now feel there is a basis for, if i can use a word like this, de russifying the artistic sort of output that we see in the west? for example, the bolshoi ballet was cancelled from performances in london. in cardiff, in wales, they cancelled a tchaikovsky concert. i notice that you, here in london with the united ukrainian ballet, are performing giselle, which is one of those classic ballets which is actually not russian and i guess that s deliberate. do you think there has to be