Dance With Me 😉

No one knows for sure when and how it started. People who love to dance gather at a certain place on a certain day to dance to live music...

You are wrong if you thought of a club or something similar. Because it's an underground passage at Teatralna Subway Station in Kyiv!

Underground Dancers

Sonia found another cute mini-sculpture "Dancers at Teatralna", and started asking me questions. I couldn't tell her the story right away but I do remember these dancers right here long ago when I didn't live in Kyiv and didn't even suspect that one day I would move here. But wait. Just stop for a moment and look at the picture above - can you hear the sounds of the music?

It was so unusual to see, I even was a little jealous. I'll explain. People who are "from the USSR" are usually constrained (not to say scared), distrustful of strangers. I mean it is common. The Soviet authorities never encouraged spontaneous meetings and everything that went beyond the accepted frames and rules.

^{the source of the photos}

But these people were different. Smiling, kind, brave - beautiful! They wore festive clothes or traditional folk clothes and were not shy, although most were not professional dancers, it was obvious. It seemed that anyone could approach a stranger standing by the wall and ask:

The tradition of street dances exists not only in Kyiv. Street dances in the sense of classic pair dances, which are usually danced in clubs - - waltz, polka, even quadrille! The dancers are mostly older people who danced these dances in their youth. In Chernihiv (the city in the north), I saw people dancing on Sunday evening in the square in the park. In Truskavets (on the west), on weekends, an orchestra even plays in the gazebo of the city park, and people dance to the music.

As a child, I loved watching my parents dance... Accompaniment is usually an accordion, sometimes folk instruments. We had a big box full of vinyl records at home. o you remember the dances of your parents' youth? My favorite was "Rio Rita"...❤️ It was written for the Rio Rita nightclub in Berlin in the 1930s.

There are several such places in Kyiv, but this is where they gather regularly, every Saturday and every Sunday.

On weekdays, homeless people sometimes sleep here. Only the painted large record on the wall hints that you are exactly where you need to be. It appeared recently.

When the full-scale invasion began, tradition was suspended for almost a year. Of course, people didn't feel like dancing. So I was thrilled to see them dancing again one day. Here, in the underground, people feel safe even during air raids.

"Shall we dance?"

"When marimba rhythms start to play
Dance with me, make me sway
Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore
Hold me close, sway me more"

Ah, I couldn't miss mentioning this movie, one of my favorites. And for a reason, because... I must be crazy. I started attending a dancing club recently.💃😬 I have loved music and dancing since my childhood and I never learned to dance but always dreamed about it. So I feel a little like a character of Richard Gere.

It was a spontaneous decision, and I rather wanted to catch myself by surprise than my loved ones. Do not give myself time to think, weigh arguments, compare prices and locations and read reviews. I saw their ad on Instagram, they said it was an over 40 group and that's all I wanted to know. I texted them, they invited me to a free trial lesson. And I wasn't sure that I would go until the end.

So, I attended 3 classes already and I like it so far. It's funny, my main goal right now is not to learn anything new or improve my form but to keep my mind focused and busy on something different. A kind of therapeutic effect.

My lessons are on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I started to like Mondays (maybe even more than Fridays)! I tell you more - I am looking forward to Monday! And І smile again, I mean not a smile for a photo but THE SMILE that goes from the heart :D I smile so rarely in recent years and laugh even less often... I used to joke and tease all the time and my colleagues adored me. Let's see how it goes.

Since I resumed my mini sculptures series, I've decided to always add some bonus to the post. About what is situated nearby.

For this spot, I have a large selection today. The name of the subway station is "Teatralna" and I think you know what it means. The Theater Station. It has 4 exits. One of them will take you right to the main doors of Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theater, it is about 50 meters from the mini-sculpture. The National Opera is 5 or 10 minutes walk, 3 museums are right here too and many other places.

Let me start with Lesya Ukrainka Theater. Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) is the pseudonym of a Ukrainian writer, poet, public figure, an incredible woman of her time. She is one of the most famous women of ancient and modern Ukraine. Her fate, her story is simply incredible. Born in a noble family, some of her actions are brave even for our time. But the theater started as Bourgogne Theatre.

The Frenchman Auguste Bourgogne built a wooden premise here for circus performances. Later, a stone building was built, and performances of famous Ukrainian troupes took place here. When the Bolsheviks came, the theater was nationalized (taken from the owner) and turned into a Russian drama theater. That's what it was called - the theater of Russian drama. I was always surprised by this phenomenon. But the real oxymoron was to name a Russian drama after a Ukrainian script, i.e. to name a theater of your enemy's culture after your national pride. The words "Russian drama" were officially removed from the name of the theater in June 2022. It is difficult to fight against Russia when it has penetrated almost everywhere.

In the same building but on the rear side, there is the Dom Bourgogne theater bar. Before the war, you could meet famous actors there, who stopped by for a quick coffee after or before the performance. I really liked their special ambiance. I know that they survived COVID, but it seems they didn't survive the war.

But let's take a look at the subway station. Its history is also quite interesting.

It was built into an already existing red metro line, the very first one. For its construction, traffic between two neighboring stations was closed for six months. Just as traffic between two stations on another line has now been suspended due to the emergency condition of the tunnel, built during the time of the fugitive president Yanukovych and hastily opened for Euro 2012.

In those days, the station was named after Lenin, because was built in the very center of Kyiv on Lenin Street. The central hall and pylons are faced with dark red granite from the then already closed depo, from where the stone for Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow was taken in 1927. Mind-blowing... The track walls are made of white marble with a Florentine mosaic.^source

On the far wall was a large bronze bust of Lenin, on the walls were bronze flags with his statements. And only after the first Russian invasion in 2014, after unarmed protesters were shot by snipers nearby, this bust was ... removed? No, it was covered with this 3D picture.😐 Well, it is much better now, as for me.

It is said that the director of the subway (Kyiv Metropoliten) can be recognized among the spectators in the central box.🙂 Maybe it's just another city legend.

At the top of the escalator, the ceiling is decorated with the composition "Spiral of Time".