Ballet in Ukraine: From Uncertainty to Defiance and Independence

Abstract

This article is dedicated to analyzing existing cultural tensions between nationalism and neo-imperialism through the prism of oral narratives of ballet training in post-Soviet Ukraine. I present and reflect on the results of a three-month-long ethnographic field study, which took place at a primary state-sponsored ballet school in Ukraine—the Kyiv State Choreographic School. My article seeks to investigate the role and position of Ukrainian state-sponsored ballet at a crossroads of political and cultural crisis, when a new identity may rise from the ruins of a previously constructed cultural monolith of Soviet ballet. I explore the complex history and present condition of classical ballet training in Kyiv, Ukraine, and reveal it as both a contested cultural space and an important barrier to political radicalization. I show that ballet training centers of Ukraine successfully resist co-optation by both neo-imperial and nationalist ideologies, forming robust and inclusive dancing communities that in many ways mirror structures of modern Ukrainian society.