Performers from the United Ukrainian Ballet dance during their opening show at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC on February 1, 2023. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP
It is a dance company but also a “diplomatic mission”. Composed of dancers who fled the Russian invasion, the United Ukrainian Ballet, which is performing this week in Washington, intends to bring Ukrainian culture to life in the eyes of the world.
Almost a year after the start of the war, the ballet performed Giselle Wednesday evening on the stage of the prestigious Kennedy Center. An enthusiastic audience gave a long standing ovation to the dancers, who sang the Ukrainian national anthem hand on heart at the end of the premiere while waving their country’s flag.
Keep dancing despite the war, it’s a way to fight “on the cultural front”says Yuliia Kuzmych, 27, one of its members, who was a dancer at the Opera in kyiv before joining the company.
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This “United Ukrainian Ballet” based in The Hague, the Netherlands, brings together dozens of professional artists from all over Ukraine, whom the war has pushed into exile. “It started as a small idea, and it ended up becoming something huge,” says Dutch prima ballerina Igone de Jongh, who spearheaded the initiative.
“It was first of all to offer a safe place to the dancers and to allow them to continue to dance“, she explains. But it is also “the best way to keep Ukrainian culture alive and visible”she adds.
“Slav Ukrainian”
If at the start, the dancers ended up in the same place “due to tragic circumstances”they are in the process of “to slowly become a company because they are all united by the idea that they represent the country”says the famous choreographer Alexeï Ratmansky, a pin of the Ukrainian flag pinned on the jacket.
“They represent the culture of this country and are not military. They are artists (…) and they fight in their field.continues the artist who worked at the Bolshoi, in Moscow, and who has no words harsh enough for “the dictator” Vladimir Poutine.
At the very beginning, only women were able to join the company, according to the choreographer, with men of fighting age having to obtain special authorization to leave the country. But the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, “who considered this project to be an important cultural message to the worldended up issuing permits to dancers.
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This is how 30-year-old Oleksii Kniazkov, who worked at the National Opera in Kharkiv, was able to travel to the Netherlands. At the time of the invasion, he was preparing to play Romeo and Juliet . “It was not so easy” to get permission to leave, arriving in July, he says before warming up for the second performance of Giselle in Washington. Since then, he considers his work with the United Ukrainian Ballet to be in order, “somewhere”of the “diplomatic mission”.
“Our performances are important because we come into contact with ordinary people. We unite Ukrainians, Americans and people from other countries in emotion»he says. “We all fight for the freedom of Ukraine, and we do it through art”adds Svitlana Onipko, 27, a dancer from kyiv who joined the ballet in The Hague in September.
On Wednesday evening, some of the Kennedy Center spectators waved national flags, while others wore brightly colored Ukrainian shawls. “Slava Ukrainiani!” (“Glory to Ukraine“), launched a young woman in the public under redoubled applause.
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