Professor Andriy Nahachewsky of the University of Alberta chronicles Ukrainian dance across borders and time in his new book Ukrainian Dance – A cross-cultural approach, analyzing traditional village culture as it expresses national identity as a an art form.

Ukrainian dance is a vibrate, colorful and full of high energy with a European style that has survived the Iron curtain with strong symbolic connection to its peasantry as a living heritage.

The book delves into Ukrainian dance and folk in general, how it is similar yet varied across countries and highlights the differences in dance between western and eastern Ukraine, skilled and unskilled, male and female, old and young, rich and poor. It challenges many previous elite Western theatrical traditions that would usually only dedicate a small chapter to such an antiquated and ‘crude’ art form.

The book identifies Ukrainian dance into two key characteristics: its legacy of peasant tradition and experience of the moment (vival dance) and the power of diverse stage dances  connecting with the past as heritage (reflective dance). Reflective dances are broken down in the book into national dance, recreational, education and spectacular.

Readers should be aware that is not attempt to chronicle a history of Ukrainian dance, you won’t find much illustration or instruction to help you identify particular dances at functions or educate you on their histories, but rather it surveys approaches to dancing, to identify important trends and explain change.

The book’s cross-cultural approach also shows how Ukrainian cultural is a larger part of ‘Western culture’, including significance of romantic nationalism, secularization, folk revivals,  as well as many non-Ukrainian examples.

Ukrainian Dance–A cross-cultural approach is available at local retailers and online at Chapters, Amazon, Google Books and Barnes and Noble.

Professor Andriy Nahachewsky is the Director of the Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian folklore, with a Masters degree of fine art in dance who has studied in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe for the past 40 years.

The book launches this Tuesday, May 8, 2012: 7PM at the UNF Hall at 145 Evans Ave. The author will give a brief talk, followed by Q&A. Books available for sale and autograph. Light refreshments.

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Making Bombs for Hitler begins in the aftermath of raids of Ukrainians  kidnapped and transported to Nazi Germany as slave labour, known as Ostarbeiters. The main character Lida is separated from her sister Larissa and tries to survive the camp system with a keen intuition and quick wits, constantly in fear of what the fate or herself, her fellow children or her missing sister will be.

Lida is given quick wisdom in passing from a fellow slave labourer to ‘find a way to be useful, or they’ll kill you’. Lying about her young age and revealing a talent for embroidery taught by her mother (who was killed by the Nazis, while her father was killed by the Soviets) aids her in securing work in the laundry, avoiding the tragic fate of some of her companions who work in terrible conditions and regarded as sub-human. Her hard work ethic is noticed, and the few privileges it gains her shocks her German task masters as she selflessly shares them with her fellow slaves to help their deplorable conditions. As her reputation for quality and detail builds, Lida finds herself promoted to assembling weapons of destruction for the Nazis. This weighs heavily on her conscious, as she is haunted by the dilemma that her diligent work that keeps her useful (and therefore alive) contributes to stopping the people trying to liberate her.

Making Bombs for Hitler is a companion novel to Stolen Child which is centered around the story of Lida’s sister Larissa, whom are quickly separated at the beginning in this story.

I found this book to be quite enjoyable. While it boasts 170 pages, it is broken down into many digestible chapters and is written in a quick tempo that makes the book a surprisingly quick read. What is also refreshing is that the book does not go into too many details about World War 2, sparing the reader from all the names and places that could have turned the story into a boring history text. And while the book does bring into light the often overlooked plight of Ukrainians and even other nationalities (like the Poles or the Hungarians), one does not need to be too familiar with their back stories to understand their issues in this book.

Making Bombs for Hitler is available at local retailers and online at Chapters, Amazonand Google Books.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the author of Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land: The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk, Spirit Lake, Quebec, 1914 and Stolen Child, which won the prestigious Crystal Kite Award and has been shortlisted for the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award and the Saskatchewan Diamond Willow Award. She has also written several picture books and in 2008 received the Order of Princess Olha from Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko for Enough, which depicted the great Ukrainian famine that claimed millions of lives in the 1930s. Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario. Her website is at http://www.calla.com.

 The book launches today Wednesday, March 7th, 2012: 7:30pm at UNF Community Centre – 145 Evans Ave, Etobicoke, Ontario. The author will give a brief talk, followed by Q&A. Books available for sale and autograph. Light refreshments.

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