Origins: Spirit of the Dance — From Inspiration to Ensemble
Дух Танцю | Spirit of the Dance Ukrainian Folk Ballet became a standing ensemble in 2025, but its story began long before.
In 2008, I began using the name “Spirit of the Dance” as the working title for my independent, ad hoc dance projects. Over the next 15 years, these projects brought together 20 dancers for performances at festivals, benefits, concerts, and community outreach events. Many of these projects featured collaborations with the Ukrainian music ensemble Gerdan–Kaleidoscope of World Music.
Rooted in Ukrainian dance, the work also ventured into other genres and theatrical forms. Through these experiences, Spirit of the Dance’s distinctive artistic identity began to take shape.
The drive to create
I started dancing when I was six years old, but I fell in love with dance even earlier! When I was two, my Dido (grandfather) gave me a concert video by the Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company entitled Spirit of Ukraine. I could not stop watching. In my little mind, I thought this was heaven—everything was so colorful, and the dancers were angels, moving so beautifully.
As much as I loved dancing, I loved the thought of creating those dances just a little more. When I played with my toys, I imagined them as dancers and arranged them in different formations. My fascination with the Spirit of Ukraine video led to more Ukrainian dance videos, followed by Riverdance from the Irish side of my family.
My Ukrainian dance instructors encouraged me to study ballet. At the National Ballet School in Maryland, I was fortunate to have a wonderful character dance instructor, Evgenia Singur. Among the dances she introduced me to was Lark (Ciocârlia), a lively Bukovynian/Romanian folk dance that we performed as a finale in our character dance programs.
By age 11, I was eager to create choreography of my own. With the support and encouragement of my Veseli Kozachata instructor, Veronika Tishaev, I created two pieces: a Volyn-style Oira and a duet version of Lark (Ciocârlia). Veronika was gracious enough to join me as my partner at two festivals in 2008, bringing her considerable skill, humor, and expressive character to the performances. Having such an accomplished dancer embrace my early work with that same enthusiasm truly meant the world to me.
With that project, Дух Танцю | Spirit of the Dance was born. It became the working title for every project that followed—sometimes publicly, sometimes simply as a personal way to catalog the work. The name was a nod to Spirit of Ukraine, the video from my Dido that had first sparked my imagination.
It also reflected my Eastern Orthodox faith and an understanding, already taking shape at 11, of creativity as a vocation—the belief that when we use the gifts we have been given for the good of all, the fruits of our efforts become transformative. Hence, the Spirit of the Dance.
A formative collaboration
At age 16, I was invited by the Ukrainian music ensemble Gerdan-Kaleidoscope of World Music to create and perform choreography for selected pieces in its repertoire, adding a visual element to its concerts.
Founded by world flute expert Dr. Andrei Pidkivka and violinist Dr. Solomia Gorokhivska, Gerdan brought together highly trained and seasoned musicians with backgrounds spanning classical, folk, jazz, and world music traditions. The ensemble’s repertoire reflected that breadth and also included inventive fusions, weaving Ukrainian melodies together with rhythms drawn from Bulgarian, Latin American, and other musical traditions.
Creating choreography to Gerdan’s arrangements had a lasting influence on my development as a choreographer. The music’s range encouraged me to look beyond familiar movement patterns and find ways to express its excitement, drama, humor, and emotional power.
The invitation was an incredible honor. I felt a responsibility to bring the same quality and professionalism to my choreography that the musicians brought to their performances, and I was grateful for their trust and the artistic freedom they gave me.
Creating for the concert stage
The dancers had a supporting role in Gerdan’s concerts, and the available floor space typically limited the choreography to duets. I learned to create expressive, high-energy folk dances within a small footprint, using musicality, character, and the relationship between two dancers to give the work its scale.
Live music brought another dimension. Gerdan’s accompanying musicians often rotated, giving familiar pieces different instrumental textures, rhythmic feels, and energy that we reflected in our dancing. Our rehearsals with the musicians took place during sound checks immediately before the performance, and a spontaneous encore might begin midway through a piece, requiring us to jump straight into the corresponding point in the choreography. My partner and I were expected to arrive prepared and adapt on the fly. These performances taught me to be fully present with the musicians and my partner, responding to the music in the moment. It was a very different way of working from what I had known in large dance ensembles and ballet schools, but I loved it!
Gerdan’s version of Lark (Ciocârlia) took that spontaneity a step further. It included an improvised passage in which the musicians imitated barnyard animals, leaving my partner and me to respond with spontaneous interactions of our own. The exchange became a playful conversation between musicians and dancers, entertaining the audience until the ensemble swept us back into the rapid main theme. No two performances were ever the same.
From dance to storytelling
A significant milestone in our collaboration came in 2013 with Gerdan’s Ked mi prišla karta / Czardas, which combined the Lemko folk song When My Draft Card Arrived with Vittorio Monti’s Czardas. The arrangement became the basis for my first narrative choreography.
Drawing on the folk song’s lyrics, the work follows a young man in a tavern confronting his call to service as he imagines one final dance before departing into an uncertain future. Thoughts of his parents, his family, his beloved wife, and their unborn child emerge through moments of longing, fear, and tenderness.
The musical fusion also inspired my first exploration of blending movement vocabularies in support of a story. Elements of folk dance, jazz, ballroom, and classical ballet offered different ways to express the character’s emotional life. This approach would become central to my later narrative choreography.
Outside my work with Gerdan, other independent projects in 2013 and 2014 brought opportunities to collaborate with friends from Kazka Ukrainian Folk Ensemble and Carroll County Dance Center, as well as pianist and vocalist Sarah (Barham) Young. Together, we performed at smaller events and community outreach programs. Folk dance formed much of the repertoire, alongside occasional explorations of other genres.
Between 2014 and 2017, I was dancing with Ballet Theatre of Maryland (BTM). During that period, several BTM colleagues joined me as partners for the Gerdan engagements, according to their availability. Loren Williams was the first of my BTM colleagues to join me in a Spirit of the Dance project. We performed together at Gerdan concerts and events in 2014 and 2015. These performances were occasional and often required quick preparation. Working with fellow professional dancers made it possible to teach and rehearse technically demanding choreography within those time constraints.
In 2017, Sarah (Barham) Young invited me to create a work for the Cinderella Suite, which would close her senior piano recital at the University of Maryland. Her friend, composer Pablo Salazaar, added parts for auxiliary percussion and celesta to the score. I took the opportunity to tell a familiar story in a more abstract way, drawing on several dance genres, including Ukrainian dance.
Cinderella Abstraction became another turning point. BTM dancers Laura (Pimpo) Vasquez and Kaitlin (Kimm) Alter joined me in a cast of three: Laura as Cinderella, me as the Prince, and Kaitlin in the dual roles of the Fairy Godmother as Providence and the Stepsister as Temptation—opposing influences within the story.
It was my first one-act ballet and my first work for a professional cast of more than two dancers. With three performers, I could suggest a larger story through their changing roles and relationships.
Expanding the work
From 2017 to 2021, I lived in Kyiv, Ukraine, where I had moved to study choreography and dance pedagogy at National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. Performances in the United States became less frequent, although visits home sometimes included engagements with Gerdan, either on my own or with a BTM partner.
After returning from Ukraine in 2021, I brought together a group of BTM dancers during their off-season to prepare a program for the Lehighton Ukrainian Festival. Our program included my staging of Virsky’s Podolyanochka, Unmasked—an excerpt from my Cinderella Abstraction—and Bukovinian Spring Duet, which I had created for Gerdan.
The program also featured the premiere of my choreographic miniature, Carmen Paraphrase, a five-minute narrative for five dancers—my largest professional cast to that point.
The idea grew from an arrangement of a Carmen suite by Ukrainian composer Oleg Bezborodko that Solomia had shared with me as a possibility for choreography. Gerdan sometimes performed it in classical programs. Working with a recording allowed me to develop the choreography independently of a live Gerdan concert. With five dancers, I could use classical ballet, Spanish character dance, and folk dance to develop the relationships at the heart of the story. Its warm reception at Lehighton encouraged me to keep exploring narrative work alongside traditional folk repertoire.
Coming together for Ukraine
In February 2022, I reached a separate milestone as a guest choreographer for Ballet Theatre of Maryland. I created my first mainstage one-act ballet, The Little Slippers, for the company’s Momentum program. With 21 professional dancers, it was my largest cast to date. The work was based on Mykola Hohol’s The Night Before Christmas. Working together had been a joyful experience, and the dancers’ enthusiasm for the ballet meant a great deal to me.
The public premiere took place just two days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Shortly afterward, Gerdan reached out about a series of humanitarian benefit concerts. Encouraged by our experience together on The Little Slippers, I asked BTM for a volunteer partner, hoping someone might be available during the dancers’ well-deserved week-long spring break.
I had asked for one partner. Eight dancers—seven women and one man—volunteered. I was deeply moved by their willingness to give their time off to help bring these performances to life.
In just 15 hours of rehearsal over their week off, we assembled five pieces: three of my original numbers for Gerdan’s repertoire, my staging of Virsky’s Podolyanochka, and my small-ensemble staging of his We Are from Ukraine.
One of those volunteers, BTM dancer Caroline Anderson, continued as my partner for numerous performances with Gerdan through 2023. Among them were the National Folk Festival in August 2022 and a performance at the Kennedy Center that December. Bringing my choreography to those stages was especially meaningful after years of collaboration with musicians who had helped shape my development as a choreographer and performer.
My partnership with Caroline also grew beyond the existing Gerdan repertoire, with much of the new work developed through our 2023 Maryland State Arts Council Folklife Apprenticeship grant. I sought to contribute to the body of Ukrainian choreographic art, drawing on a range of movement styles to share Ukrainian history and culture.
I created several new pieces: A Storm Is Rising and Shchedryk, which we premiered with Gerdan; Dance of the Roma Girl and Spring of Fate, which we premiered independently; and Hutsulka Ksenia and Roksolana, which premiered at Ballet Theatre of Maryland with Caroline in the principal roles. These works helped define Spirit of the Dance’s artistic signature and the vision that guides the ensemble today.
How Spirit of the Dance became an ensemble
Across these years, 20 dancers—including dancers from Kazka Ukrainian Folk Ensemble, Carroll County Dance Center, and professional artists from The Ballet Theatre of Maryland—helped bring these independent projects to life. Their artistry and generosity helped shape Spirit of the Dance’s distinctive identity and laid the foundation for what followed.
In 2024, I began publicly presenting these projects under the name Дух Танцю | Spirit of the Dance Ukrainian Dance Collective. In 2025, a standing ensemble took shape, and I adopted the name Дух Танцю | Spirit of the Dance Ukrainian Folk Ballet to reflect its artistic identity.
All twenty dancers who contributed to these projects over the years are in these photos. Though none of them are in the ensemble today, they are with us in spirit whenever we take the stage, through the work we created together.
With gratitude
Professional affiliations shown are those at the time of participation.
Caroline Anderson — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Destiny Billot — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Anne Gutcher — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Mimi Hardin — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Sarah Hoffman — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Kaitlin (Kimm) Alter — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Mia Koshansky — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Isaac Martinez — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Lauren Martinez — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Ryan Massey — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Alena (Miller) Muller
Marjorie O’Hearne — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Laura (Pimpo) Vasquez — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Colleen Prince
Rachel Spicer — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Madison Sweeney — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Ashley Taylor — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Veronika Tishaev
Loren Williams — Ballet Theatre of Maryland
Julia Zukofski
Amazing! So much talent!