Sailors Dance is NOT Ukrainian Folk Dance
Throw the Soviet “Sailors Dance” Overboard from the Ship of Ukrainian Folk Dance in the Diaspora by Gordon Gordey
Despite it being a clinging parasite of Soviet cultural propaganda the “Sailors Dance” continues to endure in Ukrainian folk dance schools, competitive and community festivals, and Ukrainian folk dance ensembles that teach it, post it on their social media, and perform it in Canada and across the diaspora.
The “Sailors Dance” was never representative of Ukrainian culture no matter how widely those who declare themselves as experts from the homeland would like us to believe. Its origin is the outgrowth of Stalin’s belief that Russian folklore, authentic or invented, could be used as cultural propaganda to foster patriotism in the republics of the USSR and portray the ideal “Soviet man” abroad. A primary driver of this myth-making cultural colonization was given a platform in the Moscow based State Academic Ensemble of Folk Dances of the Peoples of the USSR, known in the West as the Moiseyev Dance Company.
Now is the time for all dance instructors, choreographers, artistic directors, Executive Boards, to take responsible collective action and to finally throw the pseudo-folklore “Sailors Dance” overboard. There is no acceptable excuse to ever again stage this Soviet relic as part of a Ukrainian dance event or workshop. There is no room for silent inaction, for arguing: “But what are we going to do with our sailor costumes?” Cease the normalization of continued complicity to a belief that it is a legitimate part of our Ukrainian folk dance past. It is a pseudo-folklore Russian dance and must be left for Russians to stage should they so wish. Decolonization and de-Russification in Ukrainian folk dance must happen now and without apology. Don’t let the “Sailors Dance” over shadow the other good works that you do.
Moiseyev was founded in 1937 and then two decades later it toured and conquered Europe and North America portraying an “idealized universe” of perfect young people expressing the rainbow of happiness of the USSR. Moiseyev had his pick of the best of the best dancers and committed adherents to communist dictates. It is estimated that in 1956 there were over 3 million young people participating in folk dance competitions across the USSR. Moiseyev’s success allowed him free rein to continue to give the folk dances of the Republics an aesthetic makeover inventing folklore on command, and to stage patriotic military inspired dances like The Partisans and Day on Board a Ship — a suite of dances which included the “Sailors Dance”.
Ukraine, the largest of the Soviet Republics, would be the first to be directly impacted by Stalin’s targeted propaganda expansion with the creation of the State Academic Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR under Pavlo Virsky in 1937, just months after the creation of the Moiseyev Dance Company. It was with Soviet purpose that audience pleasing works that were in the repertoire of Moiseyev would end up directly or with minor alterations in the repertoire of the State Academic Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR and later in State sanctioned folk dance lexicon.
The irony of a “Sailors Dance” in the repertoire of the national dance ensemble of Ukraine should not be lost in that Ukraine did not even have its own sovereign Navy until 1991. The smiling physically fit dancing sailors in both Moiseyev’s and Virsky’s repertoire represented an alternate escapist reality to the Black Sea Fleet which by the late 1960’s was categorized by American intelligence as a collection of rusty metal hulks manned by disillusioned sailors who had to be forced to attend daily ideological political lectures. This false narrative of superiority proved out shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 when the Russian Navy was reduced by 75% because of being unfit for military service.
The alternate reality of this “Navy” slowly manifested itself in Canada growing out of the Soviet approved Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUCC) seminars in Saskatchewan and Kyiv from 1975 to 1991. Informed participants in the later years of these seminars voiced their displeasure of having the Sailors Dance foisted upon them because they were well aware of its more than obvious cultural propaganda purpose. The informed participants of the time would be overjoyed to now decades later see the “Sailors Dance” finally thrown overboard.
Later in the 1990’s, with Ukraine gaining sovereignty, a new wave “authentic folk dance instructors” from Ukraine enthusiastically had every dance school and ensemble in the diaspora in uniformed Black Sea Fleet costumes showcasing the “Ukrainian Sailors Dance”.
Subsequent dance instructors in the West, having returned as missionaries from workshop pilgrimages to the oracles of their ancestral homeland, now too capitalized on the audience’s enthusiastic applause for the whitewashed nationalist deception of: “These are our Navy boys”. The Soviet cultural propaganda machine was amazingly successful to sustain the false authenticity of the superior status of this dance through the Soviet and Moiseyev prism that shaped the Ukrainian folk dance lexicon. Imagine how many hundreds of dancers and their families in the span of 50 years in Canada were caught up and deceived in this State sponsored fake cultural representation.
The present Russian terrorist invasion of Ukraine has produced an extraordinary cultural awakening to transform known cultural infringement with urgency for change as Ukraine advances to become a vibrant European influenced society. Vladimir Putin makes speeches that Ukraine is not a country but a historical part of Russia without its own history, geographical identity, or cultural legacy. In Ukraine, Virsky and other folk ensembles have made their own decisions on the future of the “Sailors Dance” based upon their everyday realities and circumstances. We must respect the challenges they face in our ancestral homeland.
In Canada and the diaspora there is no wiggle room for silence and complicity to a belief that the “Sailors Dance” is a legitimate part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. It is time to obliterate Putin’s propaganda in our own seemingly small, but critical action. Take back your artistic voice and do not let Moscow’s voice speak for Ukrainian culture.
It is time to turbo-charge change to accelerate the traditional national humanistic values of Ukraine, to unite Ukraine with the international creative community, and to no longer turn a blind-eye to decades and decades of Soviet cultural propaganda.
The Ukrainian folk dance community, festivals, and dance artists in the diaspora are obligated to take collective responsibility and complete the culling of this century long Soviet artifact of the “Sailors Dance” misrepresenting our Ukrainian cultural heritage. “Sailors Dance” — Overboard.
©Gordon Gordey (MFA, MA, B Ed) Internationally recognized professional arts stage director, academic, and Ukrainian dance librettist/writer
January 31, 2024
