Dance the sarcasm

The fluidity of Vitaly Kuznetsov’s choreography and Denis Rudoi’s dancing is both refreshing and threatening at the same time. After just five minutes of this performance entitled “Suknia” (“Dress” in Ukrainian), you find yourself deeply immersed in the fabric of a work of art, amid the fragile texture of human existence. It is about nothing less than sin and pain, virtuous people and those who strive for power. “The new ballet is hot,” declares Denis Rudoi: “extremely philosophical, emotional, and acute. An invitation to our audience to feel passionately and think deeply.”

The aim is to find a new language of dance that is free of the Russian influences that have dominated Ukrainian ballet for more than a century. After years of war and daily drone and rocket attacks, also in Odesa, Denis Rudoi and Vitaly Kusnetsov’s ballet “Suknia” tells the story of human sin, finely blended with classical and contemporary dance techniques. Kuznetsov allows the dancers all the freedom in the world, permitting improvisation to the fast, jazzy music of Ukrainian composer Denis Aksyonov. Ten long-limbed, ballet-trained professionals roll across the floor, intertwined, lifting each other up, falling, crawling across the stage. Twenty-nine-year-old Denis Rudoi, a powerful, light dancer, dominates center stage as Satan. Supple as a cat, he stalks his prey across the dance floor. Clad in red heels, his feet move in an ever-faster alternating step, ending in soft, neat jumps and turns. Rudoi wears a wide red skirt with shaggy strands and ribbons that reach out for the sinners—the narcissists, addicts, vengeful people who consume themselves in a trap of greed, lust, and violence.

Early in the morning, Rudoi walks through the wet cobblestone streets of Odesa’s old town on his way to rehearsal. He breathes deeply, savoring the salty air that blows in from the Black Sea. He is worried. “I thought, ‘What if the audience is too used to classical dance, to stereotypical Tchaikovsky ballets? What if our new language and the story of the war between good and evil people is not understood, or even rejected?’” “It’s true,” he continues, “we show human weaknesses. Every scene reflects one of the seven deadly sins. In our version, even Satan seems less violent and less unfair than humans. In one of the scenes, four women try to seduce a man. But he chooses a man as his partner and presents him with some flowers.” The women on stage are heartbroken: “A story like that was new to Ukrainian audiences, but it was received enthusiastically and even loved for its lightness and kindness.”

“Suknia” was created in 2024 and has since been performed more than twenty times at the Academic Theater of Musical Comedy in Odesa. Built in 1982 during the Soviet era for an audience of 1,300, the theater has employed Vitaly Kuznetsov as its lead ballet master since 2020. He stages musicals, operettas, and contemporary ballet. “The first day of the full-scale invasion, February 24, 2022, was a real apocalypse for our ballet world,” he says: “Up to 70 percent of my dancers, especially women with children, had to leave the country.” On February 25, the second day of the invasion, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine announced that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were not allowed to leave the country and were subject to conscription. “Some of our dancers were sent to the front; at least two were wounded.” Although Kuznetsov and Rudoi are currently only in reserve, that could change quickly: if their country needs them, they, too, will be sent to the front.

Vitaly Kuznetsov owes his entire career to the Academic Theater of Musical Comedy: he worked as the theater’s dance soloist from 1999 to 2013 before becoming its ballet master in 2020. Did he ever wonder whether to stay in Odesa or leave? His succinct answer: “Everything that moves on our stage is and remains my responsibility.”

“When the Russian tanks rolled across our border,” he recalls, “our work came to a standstill: fear, shock, and the agony of uncertainty dominated the first three days of the war. Many people fled the country in panic. On February 27, I said to our dancers, ‘If you’re not afraid, come to the theater, let’s try to work.’” At the time, the residents of Odesa were just starting to have to learn to survive without electricity, gas, water, and central heating.

Vitaly Kuznetsov himself searched for camping stoves so that his neighbors could heat water to wash their newborn baby. The Russians were occupying Kherson, a mere 200 kilometers from Odesa. No one can predict the future. Amid this climate of insecurity, artists offer distraction, community, and solidarity. The stage has become a place to take the edge off the uncertainty of the present. It’s not just about the future of a ballet repertoire that is to be purged of Russian influence. It’s about psychology. Kuznetsov set a good example, giving his dancers encouragement and evacuating the 260 ballet students from his dance school. “Before the war, we organized festivals and were able to take them to stages all over Europe. When the bombs started falling and Russian tanks rolled onto the coast of the Black Sea, we brought our children to safety in Moldova, Romania, and Poland so they wouldn’t hear the explosions.” It was “a painful dissonance,” as he calls it, for audiences and artists alike: The theater’s repertoire in Odesa was brimming with Russian music and Russian ballets while Russian bombs rained down on the city, killing its people and destroying its historical heritage.

“On the eve of the war, the Academic Theater of Musical Comedy in Odesa was still performing “The Nutcracker,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Swan Lake,” and various other Russian ballets; after the invasion, the repertoires changed rapidly. Odesa, many of whose inhabitants speak Russian, switched to Ukrainian. It was a natural process,” Kuznetsov assures me: “After six months of war, Odesa dismissed its Russian directors and dancers or asked them to waive their fees. Since many of them were against the war, they agreed. We managed to acquire new rights for our repertoire. The musical ‘Only Girls in Jazz’ was translated from Russian into Ukrainian.” No one seemed to have a problem with the new version. But gone are the days when children could gaze wide-eyed at “The Nutcracker” during the Christmas season. There is no trace of Tchaikovsky anymore. Instead, ballet fans now flock to the Academic Theater to experience an entertainingly colorful production of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”

Of course, the shelling of Odesa disrupts rehearsals and performances at the theater. All stages have a standard air raid procedure. “As soon as we hear the sirens, we interrupt the performance, move hundreds of spectators down to our air raid shelter, and wait. Only when it is safe again do we bring the audience back to their seats and continue to perform from exactly where we left off,” says Harry Sevoyan, head of the ballet company. A former soloist, still known for his Albert in “Giselle,” Solor in “La Bayadère,” and Mephistopheles in “Walpurgis Night,” Sevoyan knows all too well how important it is for dancers to keep their muscles warm to avoid injury. “Even during air raid alarms, which can last for hours, we make sure the dancers are able to keep warm.

“Once last year, we had to interrupt the ballet and move all our dancers and audience into a bomb shelter; as soon as I stepped out to take a breath, I heard a giant blast. I rushed back to my dancers—one ballerina was in shock. Her legs were shaking. So I had to quickly replace her,” Sevoyan recounts; after all the show must go on.

The history of Odesa is as marked by tragedy as the mottled bark of the plane trees that have grown along the city’s streets for over a hundred years. Founded in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine II on the site of another formerly Ukrainian city, Odesa survived the brutal German-Romanian occupation from 1941 to 1944 which resulted in the mass murder of its large Jewish population. Indeed, just months before Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks into Ukraine, the city had erected a memorial entitled “Against Oblivion” in honor of the more than 25,000 local victims of the Holocaust.

As Russian forces advanced on Odesa, it felt as if all the horrors of the past were repeating themselves. In the art world, there was also resistance to anti-Soviet reforms and the change in mentality. The memories tied to the Kremlin’s ideological hallmarks, including Russian ballet, were painful. The only remedy was humor—a famous and effective weapon in Odesa. Irony and wit were used extensively during rehearsals for “Suknya.” Both are unofficial prerequisites for being considered a true resident of this city—a melting pot of countless nationalities.

Vitaly Kuznetsov and Denis Rudoi call themselves typical “Odesens” and like to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Rudoi started dancing in Odesa’s theaters as a teenager. He knew there were no taboos in his city when it came to sarcasm or good humor. War or no war, now more than ever, local music and dance fans put on their best clothes to go out. It’s the summer of 2025. On June 26, more than 5,000 people gather at the Ibiza Beach Club and dance to live music just one hour after a wailing air raid warning. Three dancers float in the air high above the crowd, hanging from a giant ball that is not entirely unintentionally reminiscent of a naval mine. This is the kind of sarcasm the pair are referring to.

Of course, the guests at the Ibiza were dressed to the nines and ordered sushi and meat platters without giving a second thought to the fact that they were in the middle of a war and exposed to the eyes of the world. The VIP guests filled a bathtub with champagne—Moët & Chandon of course—to celebrate life while death, in the form of drones and missiles, loomed right on the doorstep.

The huge party and concert by famous drag personality Verka Serduchka raised thousands of euros for the Ukrainian army to help defend the country and liberate occupied territories. Liberation, love of country, and honesty are among the themes that currently permeate modern Ukrainian art. Denis Rudoi, who staged his first musical, “Snow White,” at the age of 17, is currently working on a new play called “Cocoon” about an outsider who is rejected in the world of insects: “They lock the outsider in a big cocoon and he breaks free as a huge, colorful butterfly.”

Every morning, Rudoi jogs through the cobbled streets of his city, sprinting along tree-lined boulevards and following the path through Shevchenko Park to Lanzheron Beach. Everywhere he goes, he hears the sound of piano or violin music coming from open windows—the love of music and dance protects him and all the other artists in this city. “Every now and then, I sit down to put on my makeup before a performance of “Suknya” and hear the air raid siren, and I think to myself, ‘If I meet my end in an air raid, I’d better do it in a well-pressed costume and full makeup.’” If he had to, he would rather go down while, “ready to entertain people in this nightmarish time,” he adds.

During the first year of the Russian attacks on Odesa the theaters were still full of Russian music. However, as Russian bombs continued to batter the largely Russian-speaking city, change became increasingly urgent. In June 2022, the authorities intervened: The Ukrainian parliament banned public performances of Russian songs, “with the exception of those performers who condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—the list of such musicians is maintained by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, based on a previously submitted statement to the Security Service of Ukraine about the individual’s position,” the bill says.

In December 2022, Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko called for a boycott of Russian culture. Ballet accounted for the lion’s share. Both Denis Rudoi and Valery Kuznetsov embraced the new challenges: “There’s nothing more inspiring than creating new forms. We experiment with symbioses, with completely different elements, merging Western and Ukrainian art,” says Rudoi. In August 2022, about six months after the war began, Kuznetsov choreographed a musical based on a play by Ukrainian playwright Mikhailo Staritsky. The title: “After Two Bunnies.” The musical is about a barber in pre-revolutionary Kiev whose penchant for parties, gambling, and alcohol drives him to ruin. So he marries a rich woman, but pines for a virtuous beauty from his neighborhood who despises him. Politically speaking, it’s a dazzlingly ambiguous piece of very good entertainment.

“The rethinking of our culture continues,” says Valery Kuznetsov. “We now perform in Ukrainian. The musical ‘After Two Bunnies’ is set in 19th-century Ukraine, when people preferred to mix Russian and French because Ukrainian was not yet fashionable,” explains Kuznetsov. And today? Since the first attacks on Odesa in 2022, artists have been filling sandbags on the beach and carrying them into the city to protect its historical art and architectural monuments. Those who normally sew costumes for the dancers and singers are now sewing camouflage nets and cold-weather clothing for soldiers. The years pass, the war continues. Local theaters have learned to survive and entertain their audiences with moral messages and double meanings.

At the beginning of 2025, the floor in the hallway of the Academic Theater of Musical Comedy in Odesa was littered with broken glass. “Look, this is our reality—it must be unthinkable for a Western theater,” says Valery Kuznetsov, pointing at the shards of a broken window. “Of course, our dancers suffer from anxiety. But when we think of our Ukrainian students who are continuing to pursue ballet despite everything, and of our audiences, we jump for joy and dance.”