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
after 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 in 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, and 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. 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 with ukrainians when their country is at war? there was an extraordinary project, it started in march. i received a call from my friend
in the queue for the queen s lying in state. thousands continue to queue for hours to file past the coffin, with the line stretching for miles through the streets of london. i m mark lobel in westminster, where mourners have one day left to pay their respects to the queen. i ll speak to some of the tens of thousands already have. president biden is the latest world leader to arrive in the uk, ahead of the queen s state funeral on monday. in other news ukraine says more western weaponry is needed to beat russia, as bodies are recovered from a mass burial site, newly liberated, in northeastern ukraine. hello, welcome to the programme. the queen s eight grandchildren, including princes william and harry, have held a vigil at her lying in state in westminster hall. it s the first time in history that a monarch s grandchildren have performed such a ceremony, on their death. earlier, the king and the prince of wales met members of the public queueing to pay their respects to the
here, it really does. the accessible queue has now closed, and there s a warning the general queue will shut well before the funeral service. the line currently stretches back five miles. next week, the queen s coffin will be transferred to westminster abbey for herfuneral, led by the dean of westminster. right at the heart of this is a family funeral, we mustn t forget that. deeply personal and a very, very difficult thing for a family to navigate. but this is also a celebration of a quite extraordinary life. this evening, the queen s eight grandchildren, including princes william and harry, will hold a vigil by their grandmother s coffin. also on the programme. ukraine says more western weaponry is needed to beat the russians, as bodies are recovered from a mass burial site, newly liberated in north eastern ukraine. hundreds protest outside new scotland yard over the shooting dead of 24 year old chris kaba. and football pays tribute to the queen in the first full weekend of
they walked and stood the right beside us. the honour was notjust the fact we were dancing for her but because we were in such close proximity, we werejust dancing, she was watching, she had questions, she was asking about it, she stood there looking at us. did it make you nervous? what effect did have? it made us all more more joyous, not that we were not but you could feel the tempo had increased, nobody was nervous. it was the experience of a lifetime and something we have carried, notjust in the last ten years but something we will share for generations to come in ourfamily. it was a sense ofjoy. to come in ourfamily. did you get a chance to speak to either of the royal couple? yes, we did. the queen did not speak to us, but prince philip did stop and he spoke to a few of us, talking to us about our dresses, how lovely the colours were, how vibrant the colours were, he spoke about our dance and how we knew it and how long we practised. it was just such a humble experience