Formation and Development of Contemporary Dance in Ukraine

The purpose of the research is to reveal the features of the development of modern dance in Ukraine in the period from the late 1990s to the beginning of the 2010s. Methodology: historical-chronological and biographical methods, stylistic analysis, and semantic analysis made it possible to carry out scientifically objective research. Scientific novelty: for the first time a wide range of phenomena in the development of modern dance in Ukraine has been systematized. Conclusions. As well as in other countries of the post-Soviet space, during the 1990s, the phenomena of contemporary dance in Ukraine took place in the context of information hunger and conceptual confusion. In the conditions of the conservative state of professional theatrical dance, until the 1990s, the hubs of the plastic experiment were sports, drama theater and children’s dance. Clarity and certainty of the directions of the development of contemporary dance in Ukraine began to appear only after a number of dancers passed through training courses of European and American teachers. The most noticeable and stable phenomenon in the researched field since the mid-2000s was the activity of the theater “Kiev Modern Ballet”. The fact that the work of this theater in its aesthetics is much closer to ballet art than to contemporary dance is indicative. Similar facts can be observed during the development of contemporary dance in Eastern Europe in the 1980s – the 1990s. This stage of the research prepares the study of the work of Ukrainian dancers beyond the connection with the ballet theater, and in the context of the development of Western contemporary dance