National Ballet of Ukraine

Mikhail Mordkin, a former soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet, travelled to Kyiv with a troupe and gave performances with Art Nouveau approaches, containing Spanish and Oriental themes.

Bronislava Nijinska, sister of Vaslav Nijinsky and a former soloist with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris, fled to Kyiv in 1916 to escape World War I upheaval in Western Europe.

Following the Communist Revolution in Russia and Ukraine, however, Nijinska was forced to flee once more, to Poland, and the school disbanded shortly afterward.

The National Ballet of Ukraine company began to tour internationally by the 1950s, primarily in Communist Bloc countries such as Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, but also to Britain and France.

[2] The company currently has around 150 dancers, and stages 16 productions per month in its Kyiv theatre, in addition to extensive international touring.

Some of the famous current members of the National Ballet are Natalia Matsak, Sergii Kryvoken, Olga Kifyak, Oleksandr Skulkin, Olga Golitsia, Mykyta Sukhorukov, Tetiana Lozova, Yaroslav Tkachuk, Anastasiia Shevchenko, Jan Vana, Kateryna Kukhar, Hkrystyna Shyshpor, Kateryna Alaieva, Olena Karandieieva.

Some of the famous former members of the National Ballet are Alina Cojocaru, the Bolshoi's Svetlana Zakharova, Leonid Sarafanov, Maxim Beloserkovsky and his wife, Irina Dvorovenko.

[3] Other former members are Maya Plisetskaya, Nadezhda Pavlova, Marina Timofeyeva, Irina Kolpakova, Alla Osipenko, Vladimir Malakhov and Elena Philipieva.