Ricardo Viviani – Foto: Solomiia Kozolup
Dancing against time in Kyiv
A journey to a city that continues to dance despite the war
In December 2025, I traveled to Kyiv for a workshop. I spent ten days there, having traveled from Wuppertal via Kraków – a route that felt both pragmatic and existential. How does one prepare for a journey to a war zone from the comfort of a quiet living room? There are no instructions. Preparation begins with mundane tasks and packing. Fear plays no role, surprisingly enough – only the responsibility to pass on what I have developed over the past fifteen years.
I accepted the invitation of Viktor Ruban, choreographer and cultural activist, who keeps spaces open for art and thought amidst the war. The task was clear: to support Ukrainian institutions in describing, documenting, and protecting their dance traditions – an act of cultural self-assertion, a step towards decolonization from the Soviet grip that had overlaid language, culture, and memory for decades.
In Kyiv, we collaborated with directors of museums, archives, and libraries, as well as with ten artists and researchers—from twenty-somethings to people like myself who have dedicated themselves to dance for 45 years. The Goethe-Institut made this work possible through its Resilience Fund. The first day is dedicated to getting to know each other. I explain who I am, and they tell me about themselves. A room brimming with expertise—and yet filled with hesitation, because words fail us. Only when Karina, one of the participants, spontaneously begins translating each word does everything become audible. I try to understand the different urgency. Each person brings their own idea of what needs to be preserved.
What I’m experiencing is a city that is both wounded and alive. People who seem tired yet determined. Cafes that remain open even though the power might go out. Colleagues who work with humor and professionalism while sirens wail outside. A normality that isn’t an illusion, but a survival strategy.
It is necessary and urgent to do this work now. So many talented people are going to the front. A choreographer says goodbye because he is being drafted as a drone operator the next day. Dance teachers are working as snipers. One choreographer can no longer visit her hometowns near Chornobyl. And many have fallen. What remains are memories – and small Ukrainian flags at the memorial on Maidan Square.
My daily routine quickly becomes ritualized: reflecting on the previous day, conducting interviews on battery power, giving presentations. Everything is in the present. The workdays are packed. Memories surface, are sorted, put into words. But my question about a children’s song hits a wall: Soviet colonial overlays, foreign words, a legacy no longer embraced. And questions about the future? They remain untouched. The future is a space that cannot be entered in war, in this invasion. And then, one afternoon, a conversation with Nikita, twenty years old. A quiet moment, almost accidental. He says: “I don’t know how long I’ll live. But as long as I live, I want to dance.”
Here, everything converges: the human element that permeates our dance and makes its humanity visible. Nikita is at the beginning of his career, and yet his body already understands everything that will accompany him throughout his life. This almost unfathomable secret—a knowledge born of breath and movement—that we want to pass on before it vanishes again in the moment.
