by Keith Hennessey, 2024
I came to Ukraine because I hate war and imperialism and wanted to extend solidarity to people suffering from it. Also I’m deeply curious about, and inspired by, how people, and artists in particular, think-feel-work-dance-heal-create-connect under extremely difficult conditions. How to survive a war? How to keep dancing, or not, during a war? From previous experiences* and extensive political reading I know that witnessing is a powerful act of solidarity. I came to listen and look, with a willingness to be changed and a commitment to not turn away, not be silent. I was sincerely invited and warmly welcomed.
I also came because I’m restless and confused with my own life which teeters between fabulous, and lonely alienated political despair. With the overly scheduled and distracted attention of my everyday life I don’t have the capacity to focus or learn at the level I’d like to be engaged, at the level I have found only when I leave home and immerse myself in a place and a history with the people most impacted.
I also came because it was easier, logistically and culturally, than going to Sudan, Palestine, Venezuela, or Congo, where I am also interested in learning, witnessing and offering solidarity. In early August 2024 I had paid work relatively nearby in Vienna and I had been to Kyiv before the 2022 invasion and knew some Ukrainian dancers. Karl Frost, a dancer friend, had made the trip a few months earlier to offer contact improvisation (CI) workshops in Kyiv and Lviv. Karl connected me with Lilia, a dancer-organizer from Lviv who organized a talk, classes, and dance jams around my visit. I declined invitations to go to Kyiv because the trip is long and the likelihood of bombing and regular air raid sirens was much higher.
In discussing what I might offer in this situation, Lilia said, “we’re trying to hold together a dance community during the war, to keep our love and humanity alive.”
I responded:
“I am not a therapist or trauma specialist but I recognize the healing or calming potential of the practices we do in a dance class, in somatic awareness exercises, in paying close attention to our breath and body sensations, in tuning in to another person or group. Most healing focuses on the individual. I am more interested in “political healing,” which recognizes how we share many symptoms (anxiety, depression, alienation) with other people (and other beings) and that our pain/harm is caused by social and political forces more than by isolated individuals. My work tends more to the whole forest than to the individual tree.”
Lilia responded:
“Dear Keith, First of all I appreciate your desire to come and teach in Ukraine. For us it’s very important when people abroad would like to come and to spend some time in Ukraine. To see how we keep on living and keep on dancing in this crazy world. In a war world full of violence, anger and horrible things around, somehow we choose to love, to be kind and to be honest with each other. It is a miracle for me. How is it possible in these hard circumstances to choose the humanity? We are living in the high risk right now. It’s a revolutionary world. For me CI practice is kind of the same revolutionary dance form with a high risk and a strong survival mode.
CI practice is supporting our nervous system and is helping to survive our body both physically and mentally. In your workshop in Ukraine, Keith, I’d like to experience how the physicality of CI practice meets our Ukrainian context. Through the CI exercises focused on physicality and gravity. Through the scores and performative structures. How the Russian war changed us and keeps on changing. How the political and social forces change us. How do we meet these changes? How open are we to speak and to dance with complicated things in our lives — like war for Ukrainians and like women`s rights, queer rights and so on? We have done it every day since 24.02.2022. I think we are ready for that risk — putting seeds and uncomfortable questions. We are in survival mode.
I trust you as a CI teacher and I trust your experience. We are not expecting something big from you. We are inviting you to come and dance with us and to share your experience. This is enough. Your active solidarity position is a key. And of course we’ll be healing together while gathering and doing simple CI things but risky
physical things related to the survival mode.”
Due to the ongoing war employing drones and air missiles there were no commercial flights into Ukraine. I flew to Krakow Poland were I had a lovely day of rest, and enjoyed 2nd hand shopping, hipster ramen**, and the hotel spa. Then I took a 7-hour FlixBus to Lviv. I’d heard that the border was unpredictable and we could be there for hours. I was imagining a more militarized situation… maybe like an Israeli checkpoint but it was just slow bureaucracy, not malevolent. Fortunately I had packed a lot of food.
My host Lilia, a dancer, organizer, and mother of two small kids, met me at the station. We hugged warmly despite never having met before. She told me that when she texted me that morning she wondered if I would really come, imagining that I might cancel at the last minute. In the taxi Lilia tried to explain the destabilizing and exhausting unpredictability of the Ukrainian situation. She said they no longer had any concept of the future. She went to a CI festival in Austria last year and observed that people who seem to know their future feel plastic to her after 3 years of war. I asked, plastic? She explained, “They walk around oblivious like plastic people who can count on their future unfolding in a predetermined way.” While in Ukraine I heard many versions of this feeling of alienation or critical distance from people who are not also living with war as a daily reality or who act as if a war at the border of Eastern Europe and Russia doesn’t concern them.
On my first walk around the city center, with its multiple cathedrals and churches over 300 years old, and quaint cobblestone streets lined with vibrant and crowded outdoor cafes, I saw the first visible sign of war. A church with protective covers on its stained glass windows and historic sculptures. After dinner I came upon a street musician who had a large audience of over 100 people, mostly in their teens and 20s. I was attracted by what sounded like a singalong, choral singing. Later I played the recording for someone to ask about the song and learned that it was a pop Ukrainian song from the 90s that many people know. There’s a curfew for everyone at midnight, which I appreciated because here in the dense city center there are many busy cafes, restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops just outside my window.
*My previous war and conflict experiences: Bosnia and Croatia in 1995, Chiapas after the 1997 Acteal massacre perpetrated by paramilitaries against the indigenous Zapatistas, Cairo after the 2011 uprisings, Oslo during and Bratislava following anti-gay shootings in 2022 and 2023.
**Not sure why this is turning into an Eastern Europe ramen tour but for reference, the ramen restaurants in Vienna are cheaper than SF, cheaper in Krakow than in Vienna, and cheaper again in Lviv compared to Krakow. In Lviv a dinner-size bowl of delicious ramen in a trendy spot is US$5-7. I 💜 ramen.
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