How art can help you understand Ukraine's long fight for freedom – Tetiana Hordiienko
Ukrainian choreographer Tetiana Hordiienko tells how rebuilding her life in Scotland inspired a new production for Edinburgh Festival Fringe
In Kyiv, I spent more than 20 years as a dancer, choreographer and director, making work for theatre, television and film. I was established and certain of who I was. Then the war uprooted my life and I had to find myself again. The confident choreographer I had been now had to start over, with different customs, language, and no idea of what was ahead.
While living on a ship in Leith, I was introduced to Mission of Innocents, a charity that was starting creative programmes for children and looking for a dance instructor. That introduction, and the community of other Ukrainian families around me, made adapting far easier. I was encouraged to speak to people, make new friends and begin to settle, and so was my child.
Dance has been part of my life since childhood. I trained at an art school, studied choreography at university, then danced for years with a Ukrainian ballet company called Freedom. I still create performances, but the purpose now feels very different. It has become a way of processing what we carry, of shaping painful memories into something we can put on stage.
About belonging and identity
With this new purpose, I was involved in creating an adult dance group, Flowers of Ukraine, then began working with children, many of whom had experienced things no child should. Through movement, they could simply be children again, and I watched shy dancers begin to smile, laugh and perform in front of an audience.
Seeing that change showed me how art can be used to confront pivotal changes. For a while, that feeling had been building inside me, and I needed a form of expression to communicate it with the world. This is where Liberty comes from. Joyce Landry, who founded Mission of Innocents, helped me bring this piece of work to life and present it at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Liberty moves through more than 30 years of Ukrainian history, from the 1990s to the present day, told through dance, music and immersive staging. It follows our long fight for freedom, but it is also about belonging, about how we build and rebuild our identity, and about starting again.
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Seeing Ukraine through our eyes
Conveying the emotions felt by so many Ukrainians who had to leave home, Liberty shows how joy still shines through. Regardless of our negative experiences, and in fact, because of them, we seek to find laughter and celebration in the everyday.
I want people in Scotland, and everyone who has come from around the world, to see Ukraine through our own eyes. We are sharing what we have survived in the hope that it never happens to anyone again.
Art gives you the strength to keep living, and it has given me that. I have grown into an artist who makes work full of feeling, meant to move people and make them think, not simply watch.
Through pieces like Liberty, we are able to communicate what those who haven’t faced these experiences may struggle to understand, making art matter in a way that I hope will continue to live on for generations to come.
Liberty, created by Tetiana Hordiienko with the Ukrainian community living in Scotland, will be performed at C Aurora, Lauriston Halls, on August 21 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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