Happy Burns Night!
Some of you already know that aside from working with the Ukrainian Association of Investment Business, I have also been teaching Scottish dancing here in Kyiv for many years.
Lugnasad Celtic Dance School was founded in 2003, started dancing Scottish Country Dance along with Irish dance in 2005. I joined them in 2006 and danced both, then after starting to teach SCD in 2008, eventually completed my teacher's certification with the RSCDS in 2014.
For a second time, Lugnasad had been invited to the Burns Night event - a celebration of the prominent Scottish poet Robert Burns's Birthday (25 Jan.) - at the British Embassy Kyiv. Sadly though, last year we couldn't participate due to my surgery, and this time it has been canceled due to some emergency on the side of the Embassy.
At the same time, we were also invited to take part (remotely) in Burns Night initiated by a Scottish Business Network in London scheduled for today, 25 January.
According to the organisers (Mariia Lebovka), this year it will be held in support of Ukraine, namely - children who were illegally transferred to RU and who, so far, have been returned to Ukraine.
"The culmination of the event will be a charity auction, all proceeds from which will be donated to the NGO "Girls" ("Дівчата") for the families of deported and returned children. The auction will be hosted by Russell Dalgleish, chairman and co-founder of the Scottish Business Network."
I haven't been running regular SCD classes since the pandemic, and I've been reluctant to run classes under the war circumstances - we've only had a few of them in the past 3 years.
But we still gathered earlier this week to record a video of the dance dedicated to Burns Night to share it with the organisers of the event.
Even during our rehearsal, before the recording, we had another air raid alert, with the ballistic missile threat for Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine. We didn't go to a shelter, just kept doing what we came for... We haven't fully got used to it but we don't let the barbaric aggressors grind our lives to a halt like that. Fortunately, Kyiv avoided shelling this time and the alert was called off soon after.
This video, which I have happily shared for the charity event in London, is a way for us to say "thank you" to all in the UK who support Ukraine and its people in need because of the brutal gen0cidal war waged against us. We deeply appreciate all the help, and we kindly ask our foreign friends to continue with it as it's vital for us.
On our part, we all keep working here in Kyiv (outside of dancing) and take such rare occasions to celebrate life, even if for brief moments, which gives us more energy to keep going and supporting our heroic Defenders, among whom are our brothers, friends and other loved ones, and just our fellow Ukrainians.
