PHILADELPHIA — As Russian forces were closing in on Kyiv last Thursday, Oksana Maslova, a Philadelphia Ballet dancer from Ukraine, was exchanging text messages with friends and family nearly 5,000 miles away. Her mother, who had gone to Kyiv to be with Maslova's sister, spent the previous two nights in a bomb shelter, and communication had grown sporadic.
At the same time, Swan Lake, for which the company had been preparing for weeks, was getting its first full run-through. And suddenly, in rehearsal, the echoes between art and real life grew loud and painful for the ballerina.
"Basically the whole story is that I have to ask the Prince to not shoot the swans," said Maslova, who dances the part of Odette in the production, "and I get those parallels in my head. It felt like a nightmare, that I am literally in my gestures asking him to not kill."
