Ukrainian ballet students find safety and high-quality training far from home at Philly’s Rock School

The war in Ukraine has displaced many people from their homes. Among them, four Ukrainian teenagers who moved thousands of miles away from their families to Philadelphia to continue their ballet studies at the Rock School for Dance Education.

Only two of them knew each other. None knew of the Rock aside from seeing photos and videos on Instagram.

They didn’t know of the stars that came out of the school, including Christine Shevchenko, a principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, who was born in Ukraine and studied at the Rock from age 8.

On a recent Tuesday, Nikita Malaki, 16, from Kyiv; Artem Bilokon, 16, from Kharkov; Lena Sarazhynska, 16, from Odessa; and Alina Soloviova, age 18, from Kyiv, stood at the barres, wearing gray ballet uniforms, blending in with their classmates from the United States and around the world.

Youth America Grand Prix, the largest and most prestigious student ballet competition in the world, had been planning to expand to Ukraine last year. But when Russia invaded, most ballet schools in Ukraine closed and the YAGP pivoted to helping students find training in safer countries.

The four students are settling in to the Rock School, learning English, and continuing their academic studies online through their schools in Ukraine. A fifth student is coming to the Rock soon and two more this summer. They’ll have a cohort, but life is certainly not what it once was.

Sarazhynska, the youngest of the four, got teary speaking of her family. Her father is still in Odessa, but her mother is in France.

“It’s very hard” to be away from them, Sarazhynska said through Aya Hayken, the Rock’s music coordinator, who translated for her.

“She keeps calling them and texting them but it’s very hard to be living away from them,” Hayken said.

Soloviova agreed. “I really miss my mom, my father,” she said in English. “I really miss my little brother. My mom and my brother are in Switzerland now. But my older sisters are in Ukraine,” where they have jobs.

Malaki’s family is in Ukraine; his older brother moved to Lithuania before the war. YAGP originally placed him in Switzerland, at the School at Ballet Theater Basel, but that school closed in December after accusations of abuse, so he came to the Rock. Malaki has already been away from home for a year.

YAGP has placed 250 Ukrainian ballet students at 20 schools across the United States and Europe, founder and artistic director Larissa Saveliev said in an email to The Inquirer.

» READ MORE: Ballet students flocked to Peter Stark. And now he’s coming to lead Philly’s Rock School.

“It was important for us to find a school for [Malaki] with an exceptional program that is specifically geared toward male dancers,” wrote Saveliev, who is Russian and danced with the Stanislavsky Ballet and the Bolshoi. “The Rock School for Dance Education is known as one of the best dance programs for men in the United States.”

Malaki and Bilokon knew each other for about six months while attending the same ballet school in Ukraine and now room together in Philadelphia with several other boys.

Bilokon acts cheerful, but he is also worried about his family, all of whom still live in Ukraine, close to the border with Russia.

“Many of these students left their homes with little clothing, food, or money — with their pointe shoes or dance attire sometimes being their only possessions,” Saveliev wrote. “Once they were placed and welcomed at these schools, the students still faced challenges such as housing and food security, language barriers, and had little money for necessities and required dance attire.”

Their scholarships at the Rock — and visas — are for a year, but the goal is to get them to graduation so they can audition for ballet companies.

The Rock is similar to their training at home, the students said, in that they have ballet classes for several hours a day. But in Ukraine, they usually study with a single teacher. Here, they have several teachers and are taught a variety of styles.

Most students in Europe, said Peter Stark, president and director of the Rock School, are chosen to study ballet at a young age based on physical characteristics such as length of their limbs and flexibility of their feet. In the United States, anyone can study ballet.

“I think that they’re beautiful dancers and beautifully placed dancers with actually stronger upper bodies in general than we have in America,” Stark said. “But Americans move very fast and with a lot of energy. So I think that’s the challenge, like bringing that up.”

Soloviova said the changes took some getting used to.

“For me, before it was so hard, but now I like it. I think it’s very nice, very good, because every day we have a new teacher and some new [things to work on].”

After graduation, they’ll audition for companies throughout Europe or in the United States. American Ballet Theatre is a common goal.

“Even if they end up going back to Ukraine,” Stark said, turning to the students, “I think you’re all gonna go back a lot stronger, because you’re going to go with new knowledge.”