Why I Ukrainian Dance (and Why You Should, Too)
For many of us, starting to Ukrainian dance wasn’t really a choice — our parents put us in it when we were young, and that was it. Soon, it became ingrained in us that on the same day every week, we would show up at some church basement or school gym to learn some funny sounding dance steps, listen to some super catchy (but not really cool by pop standards) music, and prepare for the magical year-end recital that every person we could think of attended.
Eventually, staying in Ukrainian dance became a choice, something naturally a part of your life, something that you couldn’t imagine your life without.
Our final performance together in Ukraine for Poltava’s Day of Halushky.
So, what makes this hobby so intriguing? What keeps people involved for decades on end?
We, the Vsi team (Hannah and Kaitlin), decided to reflect on this, something that seems especially important during the times we’re living in now, when we aren’t able to be with our fellow dancers, instructors, and students.
Though we probably could have made a list with one million seven points, we figured that would make for an awfully long blog post (and podcast). Instead, here’s a somewhat shortened list of why we Ukrainian dance — and why we think you should, too.
1. I Ukrainian dance to connect with my ancestors.
Though you may have felt this when you were young, you might not have quite understood what you were feeling.
For both of us, we knew we were put in Ukrainian dance because our family, however long ago, moved from Ukraine to Canada. So maybe at a performance or at practice in general, we’d think of our grandparents and how they would feel when they saw us on stage honouring our roots. When we got older, we realized that this pride extends beyond the family we could think of — it went even further, to our great-grandparents, our great-great-grandparents, and to our ancestors before them.
Mykola Hohol (Nikolai Gogol), a Ukrainian writer, said something along the lines of, “Dances of a nation were born from the character of the people.” Traditional Ukrainian dances reflected the way of life, like rituals, celebrations, and other ways people passed their time.
Every time you dance or create a dance, maybe you too feel that thread, as if your soul is trying to connect with the character of your people. Natalya, a dancer with Virsky, touched on this in our last episode, when she explained how on stage at the end of a show, she feels connected to something bigger, something beyond the theatre’s walls. We’ve felt this too — maybe it’s the energy of our ancestors.
And not only do you get to honour your heritage through dance, but also you get to pass along this knowledge and connection to those around you, for example, your children, your nieces and nephews, and the dancers you teach.
2. I Ukrainian dance to celebrate culture.
Everyone has roots from somewhere, and maybe we mention our background when people ask about our family line, but we don’t always know how to celebrate those roots. To us, Ukrainian dance is sort of a no-brainer way of how to celebrate culture, plus it’s a gateway into learning more about it. Through dance alone, you learn about traditions, holidays, folklore, music, language, ethnography, modern-day culture and events — the list goes on!
All it takes is one tidbit of history you learned through dance to inspire so many other areas of your life (for example, Hannah and her love for costuming, and Kaitlin and her love for superstitions).
3. I Ukrainian dance to be authentic.
In today’s online world, we are surrounded by a lot of superficial things — everything seems to be curated to look or sound a certain way. But Ukrainian dance isn’t the same. Yes, we wear elaborate costumes and stage makeup, and our dances are choreographed to appear a certain way, but it’s still rooted in raw, authentic emotion. You’re invited to express yourself, to be a part of tradition.
It’s like when you have a fully loaded burger, with three giant patties, onion rings, varenyky, four types of pickles, french fries, seven different sauces that you can’t pronounce, plus a charcoal brioche bun — it’s tasty but overwhelming. Let’s compare that to a plain ol’ burger with simple toppings but everything is the best of the best. You go back for more because it is authentic, its roots still evident. You can taste every component. You can taste the quality.
Ukrainian dance is kind of like that second burger, with raw emotions and real quality.
Plus, when we think of being authentic, we think of doing things with purpose, for a reason. We find meaning in absolutely everything, all thanks to celebrating Ukrainian dance and culture. When we choreograph a dance, write a story, take a photo, design a tattoo, pick out the best velvet tracksuit, we do it all with a little voice in our heads guiding us. We do it for us, not for other people. If the reason behind our choices happens to come across to someone else, that’s great, but other people aren’t driving our decisions.
4. I Ukrainian dance to meet people.
We can’t say enough about the people we’ve met through dance. But we’re going to try.
Celebrating Malanka with our pals from the Bukovyna ensemble.
You make such valuable friendships really quickly with the people you dance with — you’re forced to stay in the same room together on tours, wipe sweat off each other’s faces during quick changes, and braid each other’s gross, greasy hair. And yet you feel comfortable doing so. You feel like you’re already friends because of this common interest of Ukrainian dance.
And this friendship extends beyond your own ensemble to people you see at dance festivals, people you meet at workshops, and people you meet during your travels. Each time you take your next Ukrainian dance step — starting out in a dance school, eventually dancing with an ensemble, and maybe instructing your own group — you have the chance to make friends with a whole new group of people.
5. I Ukrainian dance for the travel opportunities.
Not every sport or hobby has the opportunity for travel, which makes us that more appreciative for the places we’ve toured with our Ukrainian dance groups. Growing up, heading to rural competitions was always something to look forward to — it was a time to bond with your friends outside of rehearsal, plus road trip snacks are the best snacks.
As you get older, you have the chance to travel to more elaborate places, introducing you to other cultures and ways of life — and this gives the travel bug to more than a dancer or two.
We also love that Ukrainian dance takes you places where you might not have otherwise ever thought to have visited, whether its a rural community in your province or a village on the outskirts of a city across the pond.
6. I Ukrainian dance to stay active.
Ukrainian dance is a great excuse to work exercise into your regular life. And for us, when we already have workouts built into our schedule, we feel more motivated to stay in shape, stretch, and just live a more active life in general.
Plus, you can run all you want, but nothing really prepares you for that 11-minute Hopak plus encore except for Ukrainian dance itself.
Ukrainian dance also introduces you to different types of activity, like pilates, yoga, aerobics, and other styles of dance. This helps keep things fresh and exciting yet still ties in to help with your Ukrainian dance skills.
Sometimes Ukrainian dance takes you to Ukraine where you try various styles of dance, like hip-hop. You can barely tell this was our first time doing hip-hop!
7. I Ukrainian dance to be creative and express myself.
Even if you’re not doing a character dance, each region still has a character element that you need to portray while dancing. It’s also fun to learn all the various regions to see which one you connect with the most — maybe you most identify as a sassy Buko queen, a playful Polissian, or a mighty Kozak.
There’s also a theatrical aspect to performing where you get to create this illusion of what you want the audience to believe. You want the audience to feel what you are portraying on stage, rather than have them feel like they are watching a bunch of robots meaninglessly move around to some music.
For choreographers, they get to see their visions come to life after choreographing a dance in their kitchen, under the desk at work or school, or wherever else their creativity strikes. When things comes together — when the dancers portray what was scribbled down on a piece of paper — it’s as if the choreographer’s brainwaves transform into something we can all see.
Plus, Ukrainian dance expands your imagination. Read a single folk story and your imagination will be expanded times one billion. Anything is possible in those stories. Anything.
8. I Ukrainian dance to learn how to live in the moment.
When you Ukrainian dance, you have to live in the moment. If your mind starts to wander, like if your to-do list pops into your brain or you remember that you forgot to wish your mother happy birthday two days before, you make a mistake.
You must focus on what you’re doing — dancing — and that’s it. There aren’t many other times when you are forced or encouraged to do this in life. Dance is like a form of meditation — you even have to focus on your breath! When you’re at dance practice, you are dancing. You can leave everything else in your life outside of the dance hall. And when you figure out how to do this, even if it’s for only a few minutes each practice, Ukrainian dance becomes a great release of stress, anxiety, and whatever has been weighing on your shoulders.
9. I Ukrainian dance to push myself outside of my comfort zone and to be challenged.
Ukrainian dancing comes with a lot of different challenges. It’s physically challenging because you have to push your body as you work on your stamina, endurance, and strength. It’s mentally challenging because you’re forced to pick up choreography often at quick speeds. And it’s intellectually challenging because the more you know, the less you know. As an instructor and teacher, you need to know your choices are regionally correct, which means you spend hours and hours researching music, costuming, and steps — and that inevitably leads you down the rabbit hole of the internet where you spend hours and hours learning about who knows what.
As Ukrainian dancers, we strive to be more than we were before (while still taking lots of breaks, like when wandering the streets of Lviv as per this photo).
Being a Ukrainian dancer also encourages you to go outside of your comfort zone, whether that’s learning a tricky new combo you never thought you would be able to do or beginning to feel more comfortable as a performer, and in turn as a person, as you’re encouraged to express yourself and portray emotion on stage.
10. I Ukrainian dance to be a well-rounded person.
The skills you learn through Ukrainian dance translate to every other area of your life. It helps with time management, something especially evident during festival season. Maybe you’re performing a couple times, maybe multiple classes you teach are performing their multiple dances, maybe you still need to fit in some schoolwork or family time over the weekend — all this while still keeping in mind the other upcoming festivals, the year-end recital, and that you need to eat three meals a day.
We already mentioned how Ukrainian dance helps expand your creativity, and that’s a skill useful in every job. Ukrainian dance also teaches you how to take and give constructive criticism, again something useful in many aspects of life. Plus, you learn how to win and lose graciously. You don’t always get the part you were working for or the spot you wanted, but if you keep working hard, you’ll eventually end up where you need to be. This reminds you to focus on what comes next rather than dwell on the past.
We also love how dance brings together groups of people who might not have otherwise gathered at the same spot at the same time — people of various ages, various life experiences, and various personalities all dance together, and you have to figure out how to work together. And that’s how life is!
11.
We included only 10 points on our list, but since in Ukrainian culture even numbers can be bad luck (for example, you must always end on an odd number of shots — after the mandatory three — and you can give an even number of flowers to someone only when the bouquet is for a funeral), we’re leaving this one up to you. Leave a comment on this post, send us an email, or contact us on Instagram or Facebook.
Really, though. We need your help. We need you to sum up the remaining 999,997 reasons why people Ukrainian dance into one single point number 11. We thank you in advance, for the sake of this list and for the sake of our luck.
All of these points tie together in some way.
You start Ukrainian dancing when you’re young to learn more about Ukrainian culture, and you meet people who introduce you to other friends, tell you about job opportunities, and lead you to travel to places like Ukraine, the country of your ancestors, where you learn under instructors who give you harsh criticism and challenge your mind and make you feel that authenticity you crave, and then you become a choreographer where you get to creatively express yourself, and all the while you’re being active, learning to live in the moment, and becoming an all-around cool person.
And the ways these points combine, the paths these points lead to, are nearly endless (just like that 96-word sentence above).
We hope you and your family are doing well and keeping healthy. We can’t wait until we’re all reunited on stage and in the dance hall. Let us know which points we missed! You can find us on Instagram and Facebook, or send us an email.
And you can listen to the podcast version of this blog post (we go into a bit more detail on the episode) at this link.
Schaslyvo!