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#WarDiary 7 or #NoDanceDiary

Posted on 28. März 2022 by Lina Zalitok
Über einen Monat nach Beginn des Kriegs Russlands gegen die Ukraine reflektiert Lina Zalitok in ihrem 7. Eintrags ins #WarDiary über die Rolle des Tanzens in ihrem Leben.

Über einen Monat nach Beginn des Kriegs Russlands gegen die Ukraine reflektiert Lina Zalitok in ihrem 7. Eintrags ins #WarDiary über die Rolle des Tanzens in ihrem Leben.

31st day of war. I spent already one month in my town. It is still relatively quiet, if one ignores air sirens. Recently I cannot get rid of the feeling that I am rather useless in stopping this war here. Actually like anywhere else. The only difference is that here I could become meat for missiles or bullets one day. It would be not much meat though. My 50 kg don’t take much space, so it is not much likely that a missile is going to hit me. Also, I still believe that our Army won’t let the barbarians come here. But you never know. Death has always been my favourite topic. To be honest, I could die soon because of anything else in any other place in the world. As people in Odesa say, you have to die because of something (надо же от чего-то умереть).

I have nothing to lose, which gives me a lot of power and makes me almost fearless. I don’t have any achievements, any possessions, I don’t have children, I am not even in love. Not completely fearless, because I know that I am more than 50 kg meat. I have a life to lose which I could finally live according to who I am and what I want (if I find out). Since my school-years I have been told that I have a great potential. I agree: I feel it in my veins, especially strongly since in October I got 30 years old and realised that I have been holding my life passion in prison and not allowing it to see the daylight.

After my last birthday I started to dance every day, alone and in dance classes, at dance parties in Kyiv and abroad. I had been learning to dance with a constant feeling that I should hurry up. I felt some mysterious time pressure. Maybe it was because I turned 30, maybe because ‘carpe diem’ has always been my inner mantra, maybe because I thought that because of corona, dance classes would again be prohibited or maybe because my body somehow felt, that this war was coming, even if I hadn’t thought much about the possible war. I had just thought that I had to make the most of every day and that I had to learn to dance as a long as it was still possible. Before another Corona outbreak, before I decide to move to another country (my dance teachers in Kyiv are wonderful), before I get too old, before I get married, etc.

Combining a full-time job with dancing was anything but easy, so in order to save time for commuting, I moved into a flat in the building next to my dance studio, with a small dance room with a big mirror. In November and December, I visited three dance festivals in Cracow and spent one workshop weekend in Germany with a genius dance teacher from the USA. I took a plane every two weeks and I didn’t feel bad about environment, because after corona pandemic started, I only once travelled to Berlin by plane. Apart from that, I didn't have enough vacation days left to travel by train. All of these three lindy hop dance festivals started on Thursday evening and ended on Sunday. On Thursday the dance party ends at around 3 a.m., on Friday at around 5 a.m., on Saturday it is the biggest party ending at 6 a.m. and on Sunday at around 3 a.m. I danced as much as I could and till the very end of each party. During the day, on Friday and weekend I would also go to some 3 hours of dance classes each day with international teachers. On Mondays, I would already be working in my office. I felt unstoppable and driven by some powerful force. I felt so happy many dozens of days in a row that I often couldn’t fall asleep.

Lindy hop changed my personality and I (re)discovered the importance of my body. Social dancing is like a life metaphor, so I couldn’t help sharing my insights and experience in a dance diary, which I started to write on my Facebook. In this way I combined the passion for dancing and for writing. I even wrote some poems. It was like coming back to myself, because I hadn’t been writing since I was 22 years old or something. After feeling lonely in Kyiv during one year or so (it had seemed to me impossible to make friends when having a full-time job) and continuing to hang out online with my friends in Germany, I finally met lots of wonderful people in Kyiv, because lindy hop is not just about dancing, it is a community. Almost all of my dance friends were like me dancing very intensely before the war escalated. We had a sharp feeling of life. It was sharpened by corona, but two weeks before the war it was even more sharpened by the expectation of war. Here is what I wrote in my #DanceDiary on February, 18:

“As for possible war and the question about having fun during hard times, remember the Dance of Death and the burying rituals of many ethnicities like hutsuls who dance and sing during funerals. Dancing helps me to feel more alive, come back to myself (at least partially) and realize that I am stronger than all the anxieties and life difficulties. To illustrate, lindy hop and authentic jazz were not invented by happy rich gentlemen and women, but by slaves. For me dancing is even more inspiring during hard times (also personal ones), because then I dance in spite of all. There is something powerful in the word combination "in spite of all". To summarize, dancing is to my mind life- and love-affirming.” I also commented on one of the posts of my dance friend explaining why it was not light-hearted to dance in times of war anticipation: “Let’s “dance out” our fear and suffering! Lindy hop and solo jazz were invented by people with a tragic fate, who, despite slavery, found the joy of life in self-expression and music.”

On February, 22 I was too late for my evening dance class because of work and I somehow ended up in a bar next to my flat where there was live music. I ordered ice-cream and wanted to finish one work task. I felt so cool: It was my first time going alone to a bar; it was the first time I went to that music bar close to my flat where I couldn’t go before because of lack of time; I had a wonderful job; I was living in Kyiv centre like a protagonist of the book I recently translates into German; but first and foremost, I was listening to live music in a bar full of people IN SPITE OF all the war anxiety. I even posted a short video of the concert as aFacebook story with a hashtag #FuckWar, but deleted it after one hour, as it suddenly seemed to me irrelevant and inappropriate. Later, when the war escalated, I thought, it was stupid of me: I had better packed my bag for quick evacuation that evening. However, I am happy that that evening I spontaneously decided to visit that bar and to walk through the famous Kyiv Food Market for the first time.

It’s been 31 day since me and many of my friends have not been dancing. I was wrong that dancing was necessary for life, at least it is not necessary for My life, at least for now. Many of my dance friends, who have been dancing and even teaching many years, stopped dancing. I am so sorry for them, because for many of them it is their profession and they cannot live it for the second time, the first one was because of corona lockdown. But there are Ukrainian dancers, mostly living abroad, who continue dancing now. Frankly, it hurts a lot to read that they still dance and go to dance festivals. I click away all the photos and videos from the recent dance festivals like one clicks away photos of an ex-partner after a breakup. I haven’t been listening to jazz music and haven’t been watching dance videos since the war escalated. Before the war I did it every day to get some inspiration or to learn something new. Some days ago my dance friend sent me a lindy hop video illustrating solidarity, but I couldn’t force myself to click on the „Play“-button.

Several days ago I cancelled my participation at „Jazz Roots Festival“ in mid-April in Paris, where I was going to go together with my dance teacher. As we booked it in January, it felt like a dream to us. To me because it would be my first solo jazz festival (I just started dancing solo) and because I love Paris and because I was going there with my dance teacher like equals although I was a complete beginner. To my dance teacher, it seemed like a dream because the year before she couldn’t go there because of Corona. The organisers reimbursed our fees very quickly and I am very thankful for that. The organisers of Retro-weekend dance festival in mid-March in Warsaw also reimbursed us very quickly. Wizzair cancelled our flights and reimbursed us without waiting for our reimbursement request. It was nice, because I wasn’t sure I would manage to put myself together to ask for reimbursement. I still have a ticket for another dance festival in Turin starting on April, 29 and something stops me from cancelling my participation. Maybe the same thing which stops me from deleting all my Google calendar notifications about my dance and yoga classes. I still see them every day like a reminder that there was a different life once upon a time and that maybe one day it will continue.

This Thursday I moved out of my flat with a dance room with a mirror in Kyiv where I used to walk through beautiful streets reminding me of Brussels. Maybe because of art nouveau buildings or because of hills. The war was not the only reason for my decision. The flat owner made a bad impression on me on the very first day. Several days ago he asked me either to take my things from his flat or to pay a rent with „a good discount“. I chose the first option andhe told me to pay the rent for two „extra days“ of „staying in Kyiv“, because we signed the contract on September, 22. He also deducted 100 UAH (some 3 Euro) monthly “discount” from my bail (Kaution), which he had given me for a wardrobe purchase, which I didn’t buy in the end. Such thorough calculations surprised me, then made me angry, later I found themridiculous, now I pity him, because he sounds like a person with mental problems.

He didn’t pay me back the rest of the bail, so I didn’t give him my key back. The Scroogeseemed to be totally unimpressed by the war escalation and was sure he was going to find a new tenant easily. Later he promised to me on the phone to transfer the rest of the bail „in the near future“ and complained to me about his financial losses because of the previous tenant and problems with health. I told him everything I think about him, and he answered to me that I was the one who was unfair in wartime. He does have his own key from the apartment and could enter it. But maybe it is uncomfortable to think that some other person has a key from your apartment...

The good thing is that he is not Ukrainian. He has the same citizenship as those barbarians who invaded my country. I don’t care about the money, it is about justice. Quickly packing my things to the sound of air sirens was a special experience. But having found an unknown man who was ready to transport my belongings from Kyiv to my town without asking for any remuneration, was much more special. I had texted to my Ukrainian dance friend living in Germany that I was looking for a car and he sent to me the phone number of this man five minutes later. Later my friend told me: Everything is all right, you got this flat when you needed to dance, now you don’t need to dance, so you gave it back.

The first weeks of war escalation my body felt like a stone, I started again to live only in my head like many years, before I (re)started dancing. My bad posture was back. But on day 17 or so I suddenly started to feel that my body was waking up. Then I started to feel the strength in my body and all the changes after months of intensive dancing. So all of that was not in vain. Some days ago I had also two online warm-ups with two dance teachers who organised them to raise our spirit. We moved our bodies, but we didn’t dare to dance. In the first days of war I said I would never dance again. I feel like there is a funeral every day. And there is indeed a daily funeral, in different parts of Ukraine, with or without funeral ceremonies, with individual or mass graves like in the Second World War. I cannot dance when my people are dying. Butnow I think that maybe one day I will dance, I am almost sure I will dance, because it is wonderful and I won't let those barbarians take happiness and love away from us.

Bildquelle: © Oleksandr Kovalenko, 2022. Die Autorin des Beitrags auf ihrer letzten großen Tanzparty und das erste Mal auf der Bühne mit einer Jazz-Nummer in solo.

#WarDiary 7 or #NoDanceDiary - novinki
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#War­Diary 7 or #NoDan­ce­Diary

Über einen Monat nach Beginn des Kriegs Russ­lands gegen die Ukraine reflek­tiert Lina Zalitok in ihrem 7. Ein­trags ins #War­Diary über die Rolle des Tan­zens in ihrem Leben.

31st day of war. I spent already one month in my town. It is still rela­tively quiet, if one ignores air sirens. Recently I cannot get rid of the fee­ling that I am rather use­less in stop­ping this war here. Actually like any­where else. The only dif­fe­rence is that here I could become meat for mis­siles or bul­lets one day. It would be not much meat though. My 50 kg don’t take much space, so it is not much likely that a mis­sile is going to hit me. Also, I still believe that our Army won’t let the bar­ba­rians come here. But you never know. Death has always been my favou­rite topic. To be honest, I could die soon because of any­thing else in any other place in the world. As people in Odesa say, you have to die because of some­thing (надо же от чего-то умереть).

I have not­hing to lose, which gives me a lot of power and makes me almost fearless. I don’t have any achie­ve­ments, any pos­ses­sions, I don’t have children, I am not even in love. Not com­ple­tely fearless, because I know that I am more than 50 kg meat. I have a life to lose which I could finally live accor­ding to who I am and what I want (if I find out). Since my school-years I have been told that I have a great poten­tial. I agree: I feel it in my veins, espe­ci­ally strongly since in October I got 30 years old and rea­lised that I have been hol­ding my life pas­sion in prison and not allo­wing it to see the daylight.

After my last bir­thday I started to dance every day, alone and in dance classes, at dance par­ties in Kyiv and abroad. I had been lear­ning to dance with a con­stant fee­ling that I should hurry up. I felt some mys­te­rious time pres­sure. Maybe it was because I turned 30, maybe because ‘carpe diem’ has always been my inner mantra, maybe because I thought that because of corona, dance classes would again be pro­hi­bited or maybe because my body somehow felt, that this war was coming, even if I hadn’t thought much about the pos­sible war. I had just thought that I had to make the most of every day and that I had to learn to dance as a long as it was still pos­sible. Before ano­ther Corona out­break, before I decide to move to ano­ther country (my dance tea­chers in Kyiv are won­derful), before I get too old, before I get mar­ried, etc.

Com­bi­ning a full-time job with dancing was any­thing but easy, so in order to save time for com­mu­ting, I moved into a flat in the buil­ding next to my dance studio, with a small dance room with a big mirror. In November and December, I visited three dance fes­ti­vals in Cracow and spent one work­shop weekend in Ger­many with a genius dance tea­cher from the USA. I took a plane every two weeks and I didn’t feel bad about envi­ron­ment, because after corona pan­demic started, I only once tra­velled to Berlin by plane. Apart from that, I didn’t have enough vaca­tion days left to travel by train. All of these three lindy hop dance fes­ti­vals started on Thursday evening and ended on Sunday. On Thursday the dance party ends at around 3 a.m., on Friday at around 5 a.m., on Saturday it is the big­gest party ending at 6 a.m. and on Sunday at around 3 a.m. I danced as much as I could and till the very end of each party. During the day, on Friday and weekend I would also go to some 3 hours of dance classes each day with inter­na­tional tea­chers. On Mon­days, I would already be working in my office. I felt unstoppable and driven by some powerful force. I felt so happy many dozens of days in a row that I often couldn’t fall asleep.

Lindy hop changed my per­so­na­lity and I (re)discovered the importance of my body. Social dancing is like a life meta­phor, so I couldn’t help sha­ring my insights and expe­ri­ence in a dance diary, which I started to write on my Face­book. In this way I com­bined the pas­sion for dancing and for wri­ting. I even wrote some poems. It was like coming back to myself, because I hadn’t been wri­ting since I was 22 years old or some­thing. After fee­ling lonely in Kyiv during one year or so (it had seemed to me impos­sible to make fri­ends when having a full-time job) and con­ti­nuing to hang out online with my fri­ends in Ger­many, I finally met lots of won­derful people in Kyiv, because lindy hop is not just about dancing, it is a com­mu­nity. Almost all of my dance fri­ends were like me dancing very inten­sely before the war escalated. We had a sharp fee­ling of life. It was shar­pened by corona, but two weeks before the war it was even more shar­pened by the expec­ta­tion of war. Here is what I wrote in my #Dance­Diary on February, 18:

“As for pos­sible war and the ques­tion about having fun during hard times, remember the Dance of Death and the burying rituals of many eth­ni­ci­ties like hut­suls who dance and sing during fun­e­rals. Dancing helps me to feel more alive, come back to myself (at least par­ti­ally) and rea­lize that I am stronger than all the anxie­ties and life dif­fi­cul­ties. To illus­trate, lindy hop and authentic jazz were not invented by happy rich gen­tlemen and women, but by slaves. For me dancing is even more inspi­ring during hard times (also per­sonal ones), because then I dance in spite of all. There is some­thing powerful in the word com­bi­na­tion “in spite of all”. To sum­ma­rize, dancing is to my mind life- and love-affir­ming.” I also com­mented on one of the posts of my dance friend explai­ning why it was not light-hearted to dance in times of war anti­ci­pa­tion: “Let’s “dance out” our fear and suf­fe­ring! Lindy hop and solo jazz were invented by people with a tragic fate, who, despite slavery, found the joy of life in self-expres­sion and music.”

On February, 22 I was too late for my evening dance class because of work and I somehow ended up in a bar next to my flat where there was live music. I ordered ice-cream and wanted to finish one work task. I felt so cool: It was my first time going alone to a bar; it was the first time I went to that music bar close to my flat where I couldn’t go before because of lack of time; I had a won­derful job; I was living in Kyiv centre like a prot­ago­nist of the book I recently trans­lates into German; but first and fore­most, I was lis­tening to live music in a bar full of people IN SPITE OF all the war anxiety. I even posted a short video of the con­cert as aFace­book story with a hashtag #FuckWar, but deleted it after one hour, as it sud­denly seemed to me irrele­vant and inap­pro­priate. Later, when the war escalated, I thought, it was stupid of me: I had better packed my bag for quick evacua­tion that evening. However, I am happy that that evening I spon­ta­neously decided to visit that bar and to walk through the famous Kyiv Food Market for the first time.

It’s been 31 day since me and many of my fri­ends have not been dancing. I was wrong that dancing was neces­sary for life, at least it is not neces­sary for My life, at least for now. Many of my dance fri­ends, who have been dancing and even tea­ching many years, stopped dancing. I am so sorry for them, because for many of them it is their pro­fes­sion and they cannot live it for the second time, the first one was because of corona lock­down. But there are Ukrai­nian dancers, mostly living abroad, who con­tinue dancing now. Frankly, it hurts a lot to read that they still dance and go to dance fes­ti­vals. I click away all the photos and videos from the recent dance fes­ti­vals like one clicks away photos of an ex-partner after a breakup. I haven’t been lis­tening to jazz music and haven’t been wat­ching dance videos since the war escalated. Before the war I did it every day to get some inspi­ra­tion or to learn some­thing new. Some days ago my dance friend sent me a lindy hop video illus­t­ra­ting soli­da­rity, but I couldn’t force myself to click on the „Play“-button.

Several days ago I can­celled my par­ti­ci­pa­tion at „Jazz Roots Fes­tival“ in mid-April in Paris, where I was going to go tog­e­ther with my dance tea­cher. As we booked it in January, it felt like a dream to us. To me because it would be my first solo jazz fes­tival (I just started dancing solo) and because I love Paris and because I was going there with my dance tea­cher like equals alt­hough I was a com­plete beg­inner. To my dance tea­cher, it seemed like a dream because the year before she couldn’t go there because of Corona. The orga­nisers reim­bursed our fees very quickly and I am very thankful for that. The orga­nisers of Retro-weekend dance fes­tival in mid-March in Warsaw also reim­bursed us very quickly. Wiz­zair can­celled our flights and reim­bursed us wit­hout wai­ting for our reim­bur­se­ment request. It was nice, because I wasn’t sure I would manage to put myself tog­e­ther to ask for reim­bur­se­ment. I still have a ticket for ano­ther dance fes­tival in Turin starting on April, 29 and some­thing stops me from can­cel­ling my par­ti­ci­pa­tion. Maybe the same thing which stops me from dele­ting all my Google calendar noti­fi­ca­tions about my dance and yoga classes. I still see them every day like a reminder that there was a dif­fe­rent life once upon a time and that maybe one day it will continue.

This Thursday I moved out of my flat with a dance room with a mirror in Kyiv where I used to walk through beau­tiful streets remin­ding me of Brussels. Maybe because of art nou­veau buil­dings or because of hills. The war was not the only reason for my decision. The flat owner made a bad impres­sion on me on the very first day. Several days ago he asked me either to take my things from his flat or to pay a rent with „a good dis­count“. I chose the first option andhe told me to pay the rent for two „extra days“ of „staying in Kyiv“, because we signed the con­tract on Sep­tember, 22. He also deducted 100 UAH (some 3 Euro) monthly “dis­count” from my bail (Kau­tion), which he had given me for a ward­robe purchase, which I didn’t buy in the end. Such tho­rough cal­cu­la­tions sur­prised me, then made me angry, later I found them­ri­di­cu­lous, now I pity him, because he sounds like a person with mental problems.

He didn’t pay me back the rest of the bail, so I didn’t give him my key back. The Scr­oo­ge­seemed to be totally unim­pressed by the war escala­tion and was sure he was going to find a new tenant easily. Later he pro­mised to me on the phone to transfer the rest of the bail „in the near future“ and com­plained to me about his finan­cial losses because of the pre­vious tenant and pro­blems with health. I told him ever­y­thing I think about him, and he ans­wered to me that I was the one who was unfair in war­time. He does have his own key from the apart­ment and could enter it. But maybe it is uncom­for­table to think that some other person has a key from your apartment…

The good thing is that he is not Ukrai­nian. He has the same citi­zen­ship as those bar­ba­rians who invaded my country. I don’t care about the money, it is about jus­tice. Quickly packing my things to the sound of air sirens was a spe­cial expe­ri­ence. But having found an unknown man who was ready to trans­port my belon­gings from Kyiv to my town wit­hout asking for any remu­ne­ra­tion, was much more spe­cial. I had texted to my Ukrai­nian dance friend living in Ger­many that I was loo­king for a car and he sent to me the phone number of this man five minutes later. Later my friend told me: Ever­y­thing is all right, you got this flat when you needed to dance, now you don’t need to dance, so you gave it back.

The first weeks of war escala­tion my body felt like a stone, I started again to live only in my head like many years, before I (re)started dancing. My bad pos­ture was back. But on day 17 or so I sud­denly started to feel that my body was waking up. Then I started to feel the strength in my body and all the changes after months of inten­sive dancing. So all of that was not in vain. Some days ago I had also two online warm-ups with two dance tea­chers who orga­nised them to raise our spirit. We moved our bodies, but we didn’t dare to dance. In the first days of war I said I would never dance again. I feel like there is a fun­eral every day. And there is indeed a daily fun­eral, in dif­fe­rent parts of Ukraine, with or wit­hout fun­eral cere­mo­nies, with indi­vi­dual or mass graves like in the Second World War. I cannot dance when my people are dying. Butnow I think that maybe one day I will dance, I am almost sure I will dance, because it is won­derful and I won’t let those bar­ba­rians take hap­pi­ness and love away from us.

Bild­quelle: © Olek­sandr Kova­lenko, 2022. Die Autorin des Bei­trags auf ihrer letzten großen Tanz­party und das erste Mal auf der Bühne mit einer Jazz-Nummer in solo.