Vasyl Avramenko in the costume for his Gonta solo. Toronto. Canada. 1926. Oseredok
Vasyl Avramenko in his study. Winnipeg. Canada. 1927. Oseredok
Ukrainian dance is not a joke; it is the main manifestation of our culture; it is a national weapon!
Vasyl Avramenko
Vasyl Avramenko was a Ukrainian choreographer and the “father of Ukrainian dance” in the diaspora.
He was born in 1895 in Stebliv, Cherkasy region. Orphaned young, he worked in a mine at 9 in Luhansk region. Later, with his brothers, he went to work in Vladivostok, where he received a diploma in public education. During the First World War, he was drafted into the army and went through the warrant officer school. In his memoirs “On the Waves of the Revolutionary Years,” Avramenko recalled his participation in the national liberation struggle and his fateful meeting with Symon Petliura, which took place in Minsk in 1917. On Petliura’s advice, in 1918, Avramenko entered the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv, where he attended lectures and workshops of Vasyl Verkhovynets, a prominent choreographer and researcher of Ukrainian folk dance. The outstanding Ukrainian director Mykola Sadovsky also influenced the formation of the future artist. Avramenko gained his first acting experience in his theater company.
In 1921, after the defeat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Avramenko was sent to an internment camp in Kalisz (Poland), where he founded his first dance school and the Society for the Revival of Ukrainian Dance.
In 1925, a new stage of Avramenko’s life and creative activity began in Canada and the United States. According to various sources, he created from 50 to more than 70 Ukrainian dance schools in America. In 1931, he gave a concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York with 500 dancers from Vasyl Avramenko’s schools and a 100-person mixed choir. In the 1930s, he often performed with the Choir of Oleksandr Koshyts. In 1947, the prominent choreographer published a “Ukrainian National Dance, Music, and Formation” textbook.
Avramenko’s talent manifested itself not only in choreography but also in cinema. He founded his film studio in New York and acted as a screenwriter, director, and producer of Natalka Poltavka (1937), Zaporozhets za Dunaem (A Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube, 1939), and others. In cinema, he fully realized the nature of his versatile talent and his desire to synthesize dance, drama, singing, scenery, and film effects.
His performances were under the Ukrainian national yellow and blue flags, and his last wish was to be buried in a free Ukraine. Avramenko died in 1981. After Ukraine regained its independence in 1993, his will was carried out. The “father of Ukrainian dance” ashes were re-buried in his native Stebliv local cemetery.
