Hasmik Poghosyan, the minister of culture, says that the ministry does not have any delays in transforming to the savings policy. The savings policy for the last three months of this year mostly concerns cutting the investment capacity in construction works. As for the urgent needs of the ministry’s plans such as purchasing security and technical facilities, this budget provision will not be changed. For example, the provision on purchasing technical facilities for staging the Spartak ballet will not be changed. The minister says that the ministry has started implementing the projects on reconstructing libraries, installing modern security facilities in museums, which she pledges are urgent. “Currently all our projects are being implemented according to the normal schedule and there are no problems with organizing events in Armenia and participating in festivals in other countries,” says the minister. The state budget allocated 9 billion dram to the ministry of culture this year.
Certainly the tragic staging of Aram Khachatryan’s Spartak ballet is a beloved staging for any theatre. This ballet staging is very hard to organize because it needs a lot of expenses and professionals. This ballet shall have 87 dancers, including the dancers of Barekamutyun ensemble. According to our information, most of the decorations and clothes will be made in abroad. In other words, the presentation of the ballet due to on May 1 and 2 will cost too expensive. The minister doesn’t say how much it will cost but says it is going to be expensive. “It’s about several hundred thousands,” she said. “The staging is sponsored not only by the state budget, but by private people and investors as well. We haven’t organized such exclusive project since independence. It is really unique and exclusive,” said Hasmik Poghosyan in March during ballet master Youri Grigorovich’s visit to Armenia, who will be in charge of the staging preparation. He did not stay here long and left the job for his assistants to train the ballet dancers. “The staging is very large and difficult, thus it needs a lot of money,” he said and added that he had always wanted to stage the ballet in the motherland of the composer. Certainly the Armenian party will give a big part of the money to be spent on the staging to Mr. Grigorovich. By the way, in 1999, when the Great Theatre of Moscow was in London, Mr. Grigorovich’s lawyers demanded to give him additional honorariums for his staging ($160k). It resulted in confusion at the theater and they could continue their tour only due to many efforts. The lawyers alleged that Grigorovich’s staging is the property of the theatre and he does not have the right to demand additional honorariums before the tour, and he could get the author’s payment only after the tour. He could only demand to write his name in the brochures of the ballet and keep his author’s mise-en-scène. As for the ballet to be staged in Armenia, according to our information the budget of Spartak ballet may exceed 500k dollars. By the way, Sharm company is doing some logistical job for the project. It seems that they want to stage Spartak in Armenia to take the money out of Armenia by all means and the impression is that this is Russia’s project. It is not by chance that there have been fake rumors that the author of this idea is Armenia’s Ambassador in Moscow Armen Smbatyan. If no, why shall the decorations and wearing be made not in Armenia in case when in the situation of crisis our people need money and jobs too? Those people, who dare to provide a half million dollar from the budget, which is under the risk of sequestration, can easily appear in the same situation as Spartak did. On the other hand, in the given case the only thing that is justified in this project financed by the money payments of taxpayers is the selection of the theme.