A short story of dance – New Year’s Eve long

But before I became a sprite, I always had seen myself as Cinderella on the ball of my dreams. To be Cinderella isn’t a very clear perspective because you don’t know whether the carriage would turn into a pumpkin before a prince pays attention to you or not. And what about the princes? Every year, I had the vision of New Year’s Eve as an incredible ball where everyone screeches from exploding emotions, aesthetic scenery and fairy-tale magic. And great music sounds! And Cinderella, that is me, dances with that charming one, who (oh, my God!) can also dance! But that’s trouble: handsome Ukrainian boys weren’t taught this. The room in the dormitory bears little resemblance to the royal palace and Christmas tree with pale lights that twinkle almost to the rhythm of the tape recorder doesn’t seem like fairy lights and this slow dance with a conditional prince who breathes damply at your neck and shuffles his feet can be hardly called Viennese Waltz. Year after year the expectations of the New Year holiday had been crashing on the reality. Quite dull and unattractive reality of the 90s. Morning queues for a loaf of bread, exhausting search for any products in the abandoned and completely empty shops. Sandwiches with sprat paste. Bloody Merry. And Olivier salad as the peak of gastronomic desires.

But you still want a fairy-tale. And once upon a time… I worked at the theatre after the graduation of theatrical studio although I was studying at university. In general, the theatre rescued from reality, created the space for dreams. That New Year’s Eve a long table was installed in the hall, covered with white cloth, small red apples and chocolate hearts were put between the plates, the candles were lit. I’d never had such a feeling of alive mystery. That night some miracle should have happened. The actors had brought some simple but tasty home food. I still remember the smell of baked in foil potato with bacon and onion. Only this must have been enough for that New Year’s Eve to take the place of the best eves of my young 22 years. And before the midnight the guests far from Poland dropped in. With bayan, songs and laughter. A real theatrical legend, a director Mr. Włodzimierz led the group of Polish actors. Slim and handsome. And what a charisma! The hall immediately was filled with somewhat special gayness, voices, songs and congratulations. And then the dancing started. Why, I still don’t know, he asked me for a dance. No, that wasn’t a prince, rather a king by age and all his regalia and statuses, but also the king of plasticity, rhythm and emotions. I don’t need princes, I thought, I just have to dance with this strange man, so adult, so mysterious, with ironical sparkles in the eyes and feel how every movement, every impulse creates a new picture, new story. We were dancing all night, not changing partners – and then I understood what the dance looks like and how to get through the whole story and real love in the dance. To say farewell forever in the morning, without secret addresses and passwords, and to go to the dormitory because there was neither carriage nor pumpkin on the wheel. There was only the pulsation of rhythms in your young and hot head. To go through the grey damp morning of the sleepy Lviv and feel how your youth is dancing inside you, your unleashed freedom, grace, your true self.

We’ve met after seven years – at the festival. His patrimony, his theater, his fabulous palace in the midst of snow and trees were there. I, to tell you the truth, was afraid that he wouldn’t recognize me. A dance with a young student, so what? It was so long ago that it seemed it was a dream. But he recognized me, dropped a phrase, “You became even more beautiful”. No, there wasn’t a dance night. There was an enchantment. Everyone was singing ancient Ukrainian songs around, eating, talking, creating bright action. Cosmically talented people gathered together there. And what about me… I wrote the material about all this to the daily newspaper with which I was collaborating then. Besides, I remembered that dance and danced it in my thoughts. And after having returned home, I wrote the cycle The Short Story Of Dance.

“Listen, kid, to an old smart wolf: in dance everything matters…”.

Typing this text, I googled bio of that incredible hero of my dance and was surprised that at the moment when we met he was as old as me now. And I realized that he’s a little bit like my husband. After all, all these smart wolves have something in common.

Mariana Savka