The Body Just Knowing
April 9, 2026
Host: Andrew Kushnir
Guests: Markian Tarasiuk
INTRODUCTION
ANDREW KUSHNIR: I’ve got to come clean.
I was thinking of not including dance in this series.
I know! I know!
I can even hear the ghost of my dido slamming the dining room table with his hand. “What do you mean no dance?!”
Look, it’s complicated.
Across Kultura Rising, the concept is to feature a different art form in each episode – visual art, music, theatre, cinema – and with only eight episodes, there are difficult decisions to be made. And so, yes, there was a little voice in me saying, ‘Maybe we skip dance.’ It’s not to diminish all the extraordinary dance artists in the Ukrainian Canadian community. I just thought, ‘well, everybody knows this one, right? Are we really breaking any new ground here?’ It’s the zany and ebullient hopak playing.
[Hopak music plays]
As the female dancers spin and spin and spin, flower crowns and ribbons in their hair.
And then the male dancers – doing their feature moves, deep squats and splits in the air, one handed back-flips, big blue sharavary pants flapping about.
I mean, you can picture it so easily. Right?
But is it old-fashioned? As I’ve been trying to create for myself a vision of Ukrainian Canadian culture that is leading edge, surprising, sexy, even ‘badass’ at times – is Ukrainian folk dance just landing us into a dusty, folkloric box?
I Ukrainian danced as a kid. Until I had a double knee replacement at the age of 14. Kidding. Joking. My knees are fine. Please don’t write letters to The Shevchenko Foundation. And keep your kids in dance. I remember really liking Ukrainian dance – and the performance of it. There was this one move I got really good at, where you sweep one leg under another while in a squat position. I did it once at a junior high dance, back in Winnipeg in my teens, and someone once said it was a breakdance move called the coffee-grinder. So maybe Ukrainian dance was ahead of its time. And really cool.
On Instagram, you can follow Ukrainian Dance World and get regular hits of Ukie dancing, not least of which, a super fun and explosive video of Edmonton’s Shumka dancers in Oilers jerseys doing a Ukrainian cheerleading number during the last playoffs. And then you watch videos of the hopak – that dance that I was describing earlier – and not only do you see the young people on stage, authentically beaming, as they dance these dances. In the background you hear the crowd, clapping as one, hooting and cheering as if they’re watching their favourite band live. There’s energy in this stuff. There’s a life-force.
It’s unskippable.
[crowd cheering]
My guest today on Kultura Rising is Markian Tarasiuk – he’s someone who was born and raised in Ukrainian dance. And what dawned on me, in speaking with him, is that for all of its bravado, Ukrainian dance is a very fragile tradition, taught from one dancer to another. You can’t write it down. You can’t just describe it to someone. The exchange happens in a room, body to body, step by step. All it takes is one generation to lose interest in it, and so much can be lost.
[music plays in background]
Markian Tarasiuk comes from an illustrious line of Ukrainian dancers in Winnipeg. He now lives in Hollywood as an up-and-coming filmmaker. He’s been working on projects that feature his Ukrainian dance background and in 2023, he curated Journey Through Ukrainian Dance, an immersive exhibit at Winnipeg’s Oseredok Centre celebrating the 60th anniversary of Rusalka, Winnipeg’s premiere Ukrainian dance company.
If we’re looking for how Ukrainian dance may shape a person, Markian is it. Not unlike the red leather boots that over time form – nearly fuse – to the dancer’s foot, Ukrainian dance becomes part of the body.
You know, the boots are a good place to start.
Here’s my conversation with Markian Tarasiuk.THE CONVERSATION
MARKIAN TARASIUK: It was always a symbol of a rite of passage, a maturity to me. And I think that it is for a lot of people and your boots become your touchstone as a dancer because if they’re good boots, they actually last your entire career.
ANDREW KUSHNIR: Hmm.
MARKIAN: Everything is encapsulated – your experience, the injuries, the hardship, the celebration, all within these physical pair of shoes,
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: you know, it’s very symbolic to every Ukrainian dancer.
ANDREW: What is the ritual around, so, did you have new boots, new red boots or did you inherit boots?
MARKIAN: Uh, new, new boots. It’s really tough to inherit boots because when they form fit to the foot,
ANDREW: right?
MARKIAN: um, it’s, there’s kind of no going back in terms of, that, that formation that happens on the leather, on the sole, so you do have to get your own pair and then you have to break them in. And it just becomes this sense of pride and I still have my boots. They’re at my apartment, you know, I have a pair of black ones and I have red ones that I’m never going to give away. Like, they are going to, if no matter how many times I move, those suckers are coming with me.
ANDREW: Did you feel pressure around going into this art form?
MARKIAN: 100% Oh, big time. I, I remember that growing up, Rusalka and being in the group was not a choice. I just had to do it.
ANDREW: Voluntold, right?
MARKIAN: Yeah. So yes, it’s a pressure and an expectation that was in my family, but it was also an expectation that I was so happy to have done and, and gone through. And it still has led to and exists as some memories in my life that are some of the top memories and experiences I’ve ever had culturally. And then continuing past it. And I think the Exhibit with Rusalka has been my way of staying involved from afar with the group, because I can’t be there every Tuesday, Thursday at UNF Hall in Winnipeg. So even though I’m not dancing, I still try to be there.
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s very evident that you’re, you’re a lifer, you know, and that you’re an advocate. And a storyteller, you know, you’re, you’re, I think leveraging your gifts as a storyteller to make sure that this art form becomes knowable and understood and makes its mark. I want to talk about this exhibit. I took the tour. And I gotta say one thing that really struck me is, just to come back to these boots, there’s this sort of display – I think it’s towards the end – and it’s just, it looked to me like a dozen sets of red boots of various dancers over the years, and it begged a question from me around when, and I want to maybe to hear from your personal decision making around this, when does a dancer know that it’s time to hang up their boots?
MARKIAN: It’s the body, it’s the body telling you it’s over, whether it’s injury, there becomes, you know, because it’s such a dynamic dance form, difficult. It demands a lot of the body, a lot of stamina. It just comes a time, and I think that, you know, there’s, you risk serious long-term damage, which a lot of people have had over the years, if you push it too far.
ANDREW: Were you ever injured, as a dancer?
MARKIAN: Not seriously. The worst I had was a groin injury. I used to do this thing that, to my credit, people still talk about, Andrew. [laughter] When I was in the group, I was doing the aerial stuff, so the splits, pikes, and that was my specialty, every guy gets their own specialty of what they do for Hopak and what their solo is, and you work at it for years, and years, and years.
ANDREW: And the Hopak is this, you know, it comes down to us from the cossacks, right? It’s a very old dance.
MARKIAN: It’s the ultimate finale dance. It’s what Ukrainian dance is known for. It comes from the Poltava region, which is kind of your traditional, that’s where the, you know, the sharavary, the red, the vyshyvanka, the poias, you know, the gold. What we think of Ukrainian dance, or what, I think, the general population thinks – that’s Hopak, you know, and I, I was working on, it’s called 360 splits. I’ve only seen guys in Virsky do it, so, which is, you know, the National Ukrainian dance group of Ukraine. I saw them, they performed and I was like, I need to do that solo. And I worked at it for years. And I finally started getting it. And then that’s when I really seriously pulled my groin muscle, doing that. So that, unfortunately, was kind of the end of my 360 split ventures because, yeah, that took me out for months. And then to work back into a solo like that, it just takes so much time.
ANDREW: I’m fascinated by parents that put their kids into Ukrainian dance, with a clear conscience, you know.
MARKIAN: Yes.
ANDREW: It takes its toll. It’s an extraordinary art form, but it’s unmistakably taxing.
MARKIAN: Yes. And you know, taxing and. If you, you know, it’s kind of one of those things about training. It’s, if you don’t have the form down perfectly, you’re, you’re in for a bad time. That’s why when we train as Ukrainian dancers, you train at the bar, you train ballet,
ANDREW: Hmm.
MARKIAN: you do center. So the, the, I think the basis of the dance form itself is still ballet, because what ballet teaches you is proper posture, muscle formation, so you don’t injure yourself,
ANDREW: Hmm, yeah, I want to talk about this. This, you know, the, this foundational, you know, ballet being this, this sort of inherent basement to some of this work. We talked about the Hopak again, being this something that I think culturally, you could probably poll any Canadian and they would be able basically to tell you it’s like, it’s really zany music. It’s energetic and there’s lots of flips and there’s spins and people can kind of draw on a sort of cultural imprint of what that is.
How do you contend with sort of a reading of Ukrainian dance as being old timey, or, you know, that it’s maybe a form of nostalgia, right, that it’s drawing on some kind of older version of Ukraine. What does that bring up for you?
MARKIAN: It’s a tough one to answer because to me, the old timey-ness, the nostalgia and the tradition is what makes it special to me. Because it’s about preservation of an art form. It’s about preservation of a culture and it’s about preservation of dance moves, which is again such a niche thing. It’s preservation of choreography. Who kind of thinks about choreography in that way, in that context. It’s usually about when we get to ballet or other art forms, movies, theater. It’s always about pushing the boundary. What’s new? What’s the new hot thing? What is, ‘ooh, I’ve never seen that before’ and that’s what, you know, audiences are very much attracted to. To me, the role of Ukrainian dance hasn’t been about pushing a boundary or an art form, although, you know, there are choreographers that have done so. And, I think Shumka is a great example of that. Their stuff always pushes a boundary. and Shumka is a dance group out of Edmonton, and I’d say, you know, Rusalka still wins – but very much a rival.
ANDREW: I am reminded, I saw just the other day, I watched a Shumka video online. So there’s this Ukrainian Dance World Instagram
MARKIAN: Yes,
ANDREW: handle. Yes, I think everybody should follow this handle.
MARKIAN: It’s hilarious.
ANDREW: But there was this really satisfying video of Shumka in Oilers jerseys, and they were doing this like mashup of both Ukrainian dance and cheerleading, and, you know, you name it. It it had a really contemporary vibe to it. And so yeah, you’re right. There are forms of innovation happening. But I want to, I want to, yeah, keep going deeper into this idea of what is it to say that something, particularly like choreography, you’re right. If you don’t move it, it falls away. If you don’t pass it on through the body it dies, right?
MARKIAN: Yeah. It dies. And so to me, that’s what it is. It’s about the preservation of these movements, about this music. Because, you know, and, in our pre-interview, we did touch on Vasyl Avramenko, right,
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: and the grand, you described him perfectly as the granddaddy of Ukrainian dance. And when he brought the things over, and I was actually talking to my dad about this because I wanted to get some clarity with my dad about Avramenko and his experience with him. He said that it, like Avramenko brought over the rudimentary dances over to Canada and the basics, right? So, the core basics can be drawn back to him. But from that, and this happened during, you know, the Soviet era, in communism in Ukraina, which was that these dances were suppressed. This music was suppressed. When Avramenko came over, it was mostly the Poltava region, right, that was his specialty. Now, as things started to ease up in the ‘80s into the 90s, choreographers would go over to Ukraina and then find dances and regions that we’d never even seen before.
ANDREW: Right.
MARKIAN: So I think the Ukrainian dance that we see today, when you see a whole program of all the different regions of Ukraine, this is a new idea already. That back, and my dad talks about it, back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, they weren’t learning these dances that Rusalka is getting to do now. They weren’t learning those moves.
ANDREW: Yeah,
MARKIAN: They weren’t hearing that music. Because, you know, when the Iron Curtain fell down, it was, all of this stuff came over because that was free. So, when you talk about the modern sense of the art form, I find that it is modern now because the freedom in which audiences get to watch these sacred dances that were for a hundred years basically only done in villages under the guise of, you know, it was prohibition on these dances.
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: It’s already modern because we get to see it in such a fresh venue and setting and context as the Rusalka or any other dance group in Canada. So that’s what that is for me. It’s like, being able to see these moves is a very special thing. And we have to keep doing them or else we lose them. Right. And that’s a scary thought to me. So, I guess you can call me a traditionalist with Ukrainian dance, but I love that sense of history and culture being able to be free.
ANDREW: Well, what’s undeniable about it is, it does typically take a young body to pull it off. Right. Like you’ve got to be, as many dance forms require, a young body, so to speak. And so just to see young people investing in it as an art form, I do find brings it into the now,
MARKIAN: It’s about passing it down and inspiring the next generation, because if we don’t inspire the kids to want to Ukrainian dance, to find it exciting, alluring, magical, uh, we’re going to run out of dancers in a very, very short span of time. This is not like, oh, in 50 years. The group can fall apart within 10 years. If there is no subscribing dancers within 10 years or membership, the group disappears. That is just the reality of it. If we don’t do these projects or Rusalka doesn’t inspire the next generation, it goes away. So, there’s a sense of urgency behind the group, to me. And there have been many times in the history of the group where it’s, that was almost the case. There was the time in the early 2000s, where I think the membership was at about 3 to 6.
ANDREW: Wow.
MARKIAN: And the group was almost gone at that point. And
ANDREW: Can you put that into context in terms of what, what would be a really robust or healthy membership?
MARKIAN: Robust healthy membership – 40.
ANDREW: Okay.
MARKIAN: 40. I think there are 40 plus now. When I was in the group, it fluctuated from 35 to 50. I think when I went to Ukraina, our number was about 38. So that’s about–
ANDREW: When did you go to Ukraine?
MARKIAN: I went to Ukraine in this, would have been 2013, August of 2013. So right before the Maidan uprising
ANDREW: I want to hear about this encounter – the Ukrainian Canadian dancer meeting Ukraine.
MARKIAN: Yeah,
ANDREW: I’d be really curious to know what you hold from that encounter. And how was the dance met?
MARKIAN: The, yeah, I didn’t know, when I signed up to go on that trip. It was a Ukraine trip, I’d never been to Ukraina. I was like, this is going to be awesome. I can party with my friends. And then in retrospect after, it was a life-changing experience. That trip was also met with meeting my family for the first time in Ukraine, which was another trip in and of itself. And difficult, and lovely, and beautiful, and all the things. There was like a lot of mixed feelings with that meeting for me.
ANDREW: How mixed? What’s the–
MARKIAN: OK. OK. This is, it’s hard to talk about because my baba Tarasiuk Stefania, they described her as ‘she’s the one that got out.’ She left Ukraina out of World War Two. She was a mail-order bride, basically, to my dido Teodor Tarasiuk. She left because she wanted a better life for her kids, and to not experience the hardships that she experienced in Ukraina, and escaped, to some degree, that life of poverty. And now her kids are, you know, middle-class, upper-middle-class. I’m, I’m an actor. What a stupid thing to be, and that’s because of my baba and her decision to leave.
ANDREW: Right.
MARKIAN: And then, you know, talking to my family in Ukraina, it was tough because they’re still having, you know, they’re not wealthy by any means. They’re in a war now. You know what I mean? It’s like, it was, that’s what I, when I describe it being difficult, that’s what it was. There felt like there was this branch that my Baba took.
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: And look at what this side has now created. But then there’s also a branch that stayed in Ukraina, and that’s their life. And you know, they’re part of this war. My cousins are in the army. Again, the privilege, the kind of heartbreak that I think I felt during the war, and since the war, because I just feel so lucky, and like I won a lottery and get to celebrate my Ukrainianness, I don’t have to defend it. But it was also beautiful, because I was meeting my family. I was seeing my baba’s side of the family I’ve never met. My, uncle out there, my vuyko, it was so bizarre, he looked so like my dad. And he was doing the same, this was like nature versus nurture on display for me, he would do the same hand movements my dad does. They’ve never met and they were doing the same hand gestures. And the way they listened was the exact same, which was this – I’m going to describe it – my dad listens like this: he rubs his face, and that’s what he was doing. It was like, and I was watching them do it together. And it was like, it was trippy. These people that never met, that I could tell when I met them, they were Tarasiuks. Isn’t that a weird thing?
ANDREW: Yeah. I mean, I reflect back on my first experiences of being in Ukraina and I actually was walking through the streets going, ‘oh, there are folks that look like me here.’ You get more granular or more specific in your perception. Somebody told me before my first Ukrainian trip, they said, ‘you’re going to discover answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.’ And I felt that that was the life force of my very first trip there, is realizing that there’s so much of me there. And, and yet, and yet, I was raised in Canada. I am Ukrainian Canadian. And I want to ask you about that. The extent to which, as much as we have this tether, this almost, at times it feels like an umbilical cord to this other part of the world, the extent to which there’s a risk that we, I’m going to speak personally, that I sometimes think of myself as sort of incomplete or that I’m split between two worlds. There’s a case to be made that Ukrainian Canadianism is its own thing. It is something in and of itself. And I’m just wondering how you feel about that concept.
MARKIAN: I would agree with you. I agree with that concept. And I’m proud of being a Ukrainian Canadian. It’s something very specific. I feel like we have our own personality of culture here. I was talking to my parents about this and they had a Ukrainian come over to their house, immigrant, recently. And the immigrant, this is like a new immigrant from Ukraina, was astounded to see that my parents’ house was filled with pysanky, was filled with Ukrainian artwork on the walls. And my mom asked them, have you, I don’t know why you’re shocked and he was so impressed. He’s like, I’ve never made a pysanka in my life.
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: From Ukraina, right? And this is so, kind of these traditions that we uphold, and I think that are so, I think the banner traditions that we have, It exists in Ukraine but it’s like, I think I brought up that story about the immigrant with my mom, because I think there’s pride in the way, and then I talked about it with Ukrainian dance, the preservation,
ANDREW: Yeah,
MARKIAN: about tradition of, like, when my great grandparents came over in the 1890s, carrying that, that torch forward and continuing on, there’s a sense of pride in that form of Ukrainianism that came over at that time. And then just to connect it to your last question with Rusalka and Ukraine, when we went on tour, the Ukrainians were baffled that this, and I was like, I’ve never thought about it in this way, that a group from Canada, that no one was born in Ukraine at this point in the group, we’re all second or third generation, are doing our cultural dance weekly in Winnipeg, half a world away, and they’re really good at it. It was an overwhelming experience. And I think at that moment the pride that I had as a Canadian at that time, during that experience, is probably the most I’ve ever felt because it allowed me to say, there was a sense of, we’ve done a good job over here. We’ve really done a good job, and we got to continue doing this job of, this is how we do it over here in Canada. To have such a thriving diaspora, is yeah, it’s such a wonderful thing to me. But trying to contextualize and explain what we are, how would you describe it actually? You know, it’s a hard one to pin down, that question, I would put back to you.
ANDREW: Yeah, I mean it’s, uh, it’s held in the body in such different ways and I, I think about, my, my dido Petro’s, you know, journey after the Second World War and, and he was a big, big patriot and, uh, you know, it was incumbent on all of us to learn the language and, go to Ukrainian jail on Saturdays, learn the
MARKIAN: Oh,
ANDREW: history and
MARKIAN: My parents never made me do it.
ANDREW: oh, really you got out of Ukrainian jail.
MARKIAN: I got out of Ukrainian jail. Well, I went to a Ukrainian bilingual immersion program.
ANDREW: OK,
MARKIAN: So I think they thought that I was doing Ukrainian five days a week.
ANDREW: I see
MARKIAN: So,
ANDREW: good enough. Yeah,
MARKIAN: good enough. I don’t have to go to the jail on Saturday.
ANDREW: Yeah, I mean for me there is there’s, there is an inherent tension and, and you know, I’m a very openly queer Ukrainian, I have my closest friends, in fact, in Ukraine are queer activists, are LGBTQ+ activists. And so, admittedly, as I hear about, you know, the virtues of tradition, I’m always thinking a little bit about the rigidity that comes with tradition and, um, you know, what it is to march in the Pride Parade in Toronto as our group is one thing, you know, we’re met with, I would say thunderous joy. And when we march in the Toronto Ukrainian Festival, there is sometimes a bit of thunderous joy, but there’s also arms crossed and people wondering what are we doing there. And that has been changing and I think that’s actually one of the, I don’t want to call it a silver lining. I don’t know what we call it when there are actually some unexpected virtues to wartime. But I do think that more and more Ukrainians in the diaspora are realizing that there’s not just one way to be a Ukrainian. And, and that there is, it’s incumbent on us actually across our differences to pull together if we want this victory to happen. And not just victory, but like, what’s the democracy on the other side of that victory, what is that going to look like? What is that going to feel like?
MARKIAN: Yeah.
ANDREW: Um, and I think, you know, I, I, I, there’s this tension in me around the pysanky and the, even the church going, like, what’s beautiful about the church going and yet the, the shadow side of some of these things. Um, particularly when, you know, there are, there are Ukrainians on the margins and I’ve sometimes felt that.
MARKIAN: I think you made a great point within, within that answer to me, which is tradition and, you know, we can go back to the word evolution. Because I think since the war, you’re right, I have felt a sense of freedom emerge out of Ukrainianism. That if any way you celebrate it now is, is the right way, right? Like, because any ounce of Ukrainian joy, celebration, recognition we can get is important. So, I definitely feel like since the war there’s been a shift in like, how do you, what does it mean to be Ukrainian or, or pride. I think I don’t know if you ever grew up around this, I definitely did, of elitism within the Ukrainian community in terms of, well, ‘I’m more Ukrainian than you. I speak better Ukrainian than you.’ You know, ‘What’s your name? How do you roll your ‘r’’s?’ There was definitely that happening.
ANDREW: Purity testing, right?
MARKIAN: Purity testing. There’s a hundred percent purity testing. And I think it, you know, shout out to the boomers, that I’ve mostly seen it within that generation.
ANDREW: Right.
MARKIAN: And that’s gone away, because even those people that I think had that elitism or that purity testing mentality, it doesn’t matter now. Because I don’t care if you’re one-tenth Ukrainian, if you take pride in that one-tenth and are just starting to be introduced to the culture, and learn it.
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: That’s valuable right now, that’s really valuable. And so I think the, yes, you’re right that the celebration of the culture itself is expanding its horizon, breaking these, we have to do it like this, tradition is like that. You know, I think there can be movement. I think, definitely, you’re right. And you also touched on the religion part of it. That’s a really sticky thing for me included too, right? That one’s a bit more rigid. That’s why I have a tough, a tough relationship with the church.
ANDREW: Right. And yet your grandfather was a priest, right?
MARKIAN: He was, a very active priest. He was head of the consistory, which is the, you know, the administrative side of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. I grew up going to church every Sunday. And I was an altar boy. I went to SUMK, which is the Ukrainian Orthodox youth group. I went to Veselka summer camp, which is the Orthodox summer camp. Religion was entrenched in my upbringing. Yet I don’t have that much of a relationship with it now. For I think the things you were, you were, I think identifying Andrew, you know, that, the gender roles, the homophobia, the things that are so deeply entrenched in that religion, still, unfortunately, really turned me off. But one of the things I, you know, I still do attend church on, they call it CEOs, Christmas and Easter only.
ANDREW: I’ve never heard that. CEOs?
MARKIAN: What I love about it though, Andrew, is the music, the hymns, and the language. So again, it’s… that’s when you’re talking about the tension.
ANDREW: Yeah,
MARKIAN: For me, the tension within that is, this is such an easy, accessible way to experience the language and songs. Yet I don’t love this over here. That tension exists. Absolutely.
ANDREW: Yeah, I’m thinking of my Baba’s funeral. And, again, it was wild at this age to be in my childhood church in Montreal at her funeral service. And, you know, again, I, a very complex space. But when Vichnaia Pamiat is sung – Eternal Memory, is that a fair translation –
MARKIAN: That is exact. Yep.
ANDREW: I was just undone by that. There’s something just, you know, it’s a very simple lyric. It’s just repeating Vichnaia Pamiat, Eternal Memory, Eternal Memory. This, it works on a cellular level, I think, with me, even though the space itself
MARKIAN: Yeah.
ANDREW: can be hostile to folks like me.
MARKIAN: Absolutely hostile. You know, not a super welcoming space. I really wish that could change, you know.
ANDREW: I think it might be. I mean, I want to believe that it is. I want to believe that there is movement. It’s maybe not, it’s maybe not as fast as anybody may want. But I have to believe that the greater vision of Ukraine and Ukrainianism surviving this horrible assault on it, I have to believe that that can potentially override all these other things. I don’t know. But I do think, our community, our culture, as every community and every culture, has work to do to make that easier, you know, and to make that a more loving act.
MARKIAN: I think you have to be right on that. And I think, you know, you’re right. I think where it comes from for me is like, exactly that. It’s if I’m criticizing it, I’m not helping it. But the mentality should be the opposite, right? That by critiquing or, you know, challenging these norms, we actually become stronger, and that’s, to me, when you just spoke about the hostile environment. So, my thing with the church, for example, is my vuyko Andriy, was a queer man too. And I know he wasn’t welcome in there. I know he couldn’t get married in there. And I can’t subscribe to an institution where my family and the people I love or anybody is excluded. That’s just not how I operate.
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: And so I challenge the church and I will always, you know, and maybe calling it out a little bit more is what needs to happen because that has to be an inclusive space, because it’s a space of culture to me, it’s not of religion. It’s still hard for me, it’s still uncomfortable, and I can already hear my mom saying, ‘well, you’re not supposed to talk about that stuff’.
ANDREW: Yeah, but what is your vuyko Andriy saying, what is your uncle Andriy saying from the other side?
MARKIAN: From the other side.
ANDREW: When did he pass away?
MARKIAN: He passed away in, in ‘23 in, yeah, the summer, it was June of 2023. It was, it was tough. It was… my Baba Jane passed away in January of ‘23. So the last matriarch, or the matriarch of our family, my last grandparent of that generation passed away. And then, so that felt like a massive cultural loss. And then, you know, and including family and love, but culturally too because that, when that generation passes on, that is the death of a certain way of Ukrainian in this country. And
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: then when my vuyko passed away in June of that same year, it was like a double blow of culture because he was so active within the theater community, his Ukrainian background was such an influence to him and to me, the way he inspired me. And what would he be saying? He would be saying, you know, I don’t know what, what the, what I’m allowed to say, he would say, ‘fuck ‘em, Markian’. You know…
ANDREW: I met him once and I believe that he would have said that. He took me out for lunch after he saw my play Wormwood at Tarragon Theater and he said, ‘let’s go out for lunch’. I think he was really energized about a gay Ukrainian playwright working in Toronto,
MARKIAN: Yeah.
ANDREW: and he was nothing but kind and encouraging. And I think what I remember most was him saying ‘keep going…
MARKIAN: Yeah.
ANDREW: keep going, keep going’.
MARKIAN: I think, Andrew, you know what, that’s a better way of saying that what I just said, ‘keep going’.
[laughter]
MARKIAN: [indistinct] swears in my mouth. I was like, I don’t know. He would say, keep going, he would say fight for, fight for what you believe in. Good for you. Like, you know, be the change you want to see, because I think that’s what he was
ANDREW: Yeah.
MARKIAN: to an extent, especially within the theater community, within Canada, and being a director. That’s, that’s what he, he always put on the things he wanted to see change, you know…
ANDREW: Yes. And you brought up your Baba and it’s making me think, you gave me a little bit of a sneak peek of one of your upcoming projects.
MARKIAN: Yeah.
ANDREW: And I’m wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about Baba’s Boots.
MARKIAN: Yes, Baba’s Boots. It’s an animated 2D short film that tells the story of a grieving Dido, grandfather, has to babysit his granddaughter for an afternoon. And we all, I think, Andrew, if you ever spent time with your baba and dido, those afternoons could be long, could be boring as a child. It’s hard to connect with your grandparents as a young person, you know, I felt like that way, the language barrier, the culture barrier was really difficult. So, we see that tension happen in the short film. As the dido falls asleep and takes a nap, Anna, the little girl, goes to her baba’s bedroom, who’s, you know, she just recently passed away. So, she has all of her moving boxes, storage boxes out there that dido was packing up, finds a pair of Ukrainian red dance boots, puts them on, and dido wakes up, he sees his granddaughter dressed in this outfit and goes and puts on one himself. And they connect over Ukrainian dance in the living room, and that’s the way they can connect. Within that time of dancing, we see a flashback where we realize that dido and baba met Ukrainian dancing themselves, so now he gets to pass down his way of connection to his granddaughter, the way he found his love in the first place, he gets to pass that love down. So that’s the, that’s the whole short film.
ANDREW: And if it sounds like a tearjerker, it’s because it absolutely is. I watched the, what is it called, an ‘animatic’, which is sort of the sketching out.
MARKIAN: Yeah, It’s a visual storyboard,
ANDREW: I was bawling! I was bawling! I was bawling and it’s not even done yet. I was like, ‘oh, boy.’
MARKIAN: We’re at early stages still, but, you know, I’m very proud of where it’s at. The story for me, and I had to kind of write about this in my, in my grant proposals for the project, was what is, what is the story about and we, this is all coming full circle in our conversation here, is it’s about the Ukrainian Canadian experience that I know a lot of kids had with their babas and didos, those, and you know, it makes me emotional that my grandparents are gone and when that happened I think, and then with my vuyko passing away too, was this sense of ‘uh-oh, guess who this responsibility is coming on to now.’ It’s me. My parents are still around and of course they’re the, you know, the harbingers, I think the true culture, you know, but there’s a sense of how do I, how do I pass things down now, how do I bring Ukrainian into my artistry?
ANDREW: So, you use that word evolution, you know the dancer after the dance, and I’m really, really struck by even just this rough draft of this animated short, how it is an act of dance. Like it feels so, that movement is so alive and well, not just in subject matter but just even in the aesthetics of it. The way you’re, you’re taking on the story. And so, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to see that continuum.
MARKIAN: Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I mean I think when I really dissect how Ukrainian dance has influenced me in my artistry, it’s about the lyricism about it, the movement, the flow. I think when you grow up with dance, with Ukrainian music which is also so diverse in so many ways, the storytelling nature of Ukrainian dance, that definitely has seeped into my artistry and the way I shape story or movement.
ANDREW: I do want to ask you about your film making career. I want to specifically ask about Hunting Matthew Nichols.
MARKIAN: Yes.
ANDREW: Would you classify it as a horror film?
MARKIAN: Yeah, I would.
ANDREW: Okay. I was just thinking about horror and, like the Ukrainian sense of humor. And also just our capacity to hold darkness as a culture. I don’t know…
MARKIAN: Oh, interesting. That’s the first time I’ve heard that, Andrew, I think that’s, there is so, when you look back at the history of Ukraina, there is so much trauma and horror, it’s actually mind-boggling to try to comprehend. So maybe you’re onto something, like, me as a kid, the visuals of the Holodomor are just like there, you know, also with the Holocaust, which Ukraine of course was very much in the middle of during World War II, like, and then Chornobyl, the horrors behind the body horror behind that. These stories have been just normal life for Ukrainians.
ANDREW: And as kids, this is the other thing, right, like, I mean, as kids, there was no sort of like, let’s keep the kids from seeing this stuff.
MARKIAN: It’s like, this is reality, like, this is life, right, there is this, there is no sugar coating. You’re right. I’ve never actually thought about it in that context before. So, you’re bringing up a really interesting thing for me to digest right now and chew on. But I would describe Hunting, Matthew Nichols as a horror mockumentary. And so I present it as a Netflix true crime documentary that slowly, slowly shifts. And you talk about lyricism. It’s been described as a ballet into horror, which is, I want to my, I’ll take that, that compliment somebody gave me to the grave. And that’s a different side of me than my Ukrainian side, but how, you know, it’s informed. Again, if you want to talk from like a director, you’ve directed things, like just the inspiration with how I worked with, what you mentioned, composers, right. How I was able to talk to them and create story and create a score and themes, motifs within that score were all because of Ukrainian dance, right. The way I can shape this and the way I know, archetypes and stories and the role of heroes and villains and all that stuff comes from, from a Ukrainian side, and then oddly enough
ANDREW: And it’s in your body. That’s the thing that’s occurring to me right now, actually. It’s not music you were listening to on earphones, you know, it’s not something you were just reading, it went into your body.
MARKIAN: You’re right. And if you were to ever watch me edit a film, Andrew, I go into this Zen mode where I’m sitting there with my editor and what I do is, I close my eyes and I watch, I listen to the scene because I know the cut points based on the song of the scene, I call it. I can feel when the cut points need to happen based on, again, that body, just knowing when the tempo of the scene needs to change, or we need to move on and the new song starts, right?
ANDREW: Sounds like you were wired by Rusalka.
MARKIAN: I think so. It’s
ANDREW: I think you’ve been programmed.
MARKIAN: I’ve been programmed, and it is fully ingrained in me, and everything I do now that, you know, I think I’ve got a disease, a Rusalka disease.
ANDREW: Or a gift,
MARKIAN: A gift.
ANDREW: Let’s call it a gift.
MARKIAN: Yes, yes, yes.
MARKIAN’S CULTURAL RECOMMENDATIONS
ANDREW: You know the routine, I always ask my guests to recommend to us a Ukrainian or Ukrainian Canadian artist or work of art. Here’s what Markian said.
MARKIAN: Victor Cicansky would be my go-to visual artist, sculptor. He was based out of Regina, Saskatchewan. He just passed away this last year. Um, he does jar artwork, um, which are preservatives, and I encourage everybody, they’re, the most beautiful things, they’re so simple. It’s just a mason jar, like ceramic, with different preservatives in there – carrots, pickles, beans, anything. He’s created hundreds of these beans and my vuyko Andriy had hundreds of them in his house in like a, uh, a fake, uh, kind of pantry, yeah. So, it’s just like an art installation pantry. Incredible. It connected me to my baba and dido, to my culture so immediately and viscerally.
ANDREW: That’s sculptor Victor Cicansky. There’s a 30-min doc online about that artist called: Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe. You should give it a watch.
https://www.gibsongallery.com/artists/victor-cicansky/
CREDITS
Kultura Rising is written and hosted by yours truly Andrew Kushnir.
Alison Broverman is our senior producer.
Pippa Johnstone is our executive producer.
Mixing and sound design by Mark Angly.
Original music by Daughters of Donbas (feat. Marichka).
Podcast graphics by Nicholas Luchak.
This has been an original podcast from The Shevchenko Foundation, Canada’s premier, national, charitable foundation for Ukrainian Canadian arts, heritage and culture since 1963. Here’s a little bit more about it.
TARAS KULISH: My name is Taras Kulish. I am the Executive Director of the Orchestre classique de Montréal . I am also the President of the Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec. The Shevchenko Foundation has supported several of my endeavors, artistic cultural endeavors, over the last decade, I would say. Their support is invaluable for the community, for the sharing and celebrating of Ukrainian culture across Canada. I would say that, I’ve always said since the beginning of this war on Ukraine, that the, it’s not just a war of bombs and artillery and geopolitics. It’s a war on our cultural identity. Our cultural identity today, it’s very much important for it to shine more than ever.
[MUSIC]
ANDREW: I hope you join us next time and that you’ll keep showing up on the cultural front.
Slava Ukraini!