On a recent Saturday, a group of beginner dancers gathered to practice the heel flicks, twists, and sashays of the tango in Irpin, just outside Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Together with neighboring Bucha, the satellite town became a byword for the brutality of Russian occupation after Vladimir Putin’s troops retreated in April, leaving behind mass graves along with evidence of torture and civilian executions. But for two hours, twice a week, the dancers leave those horrors behind.
They’re mostly women, recently returned with their children from elsewhere in Europe. Some came back to reunite with their husbands or parents, others for jobs or the start of the school year. And some came back because of the gnawing sense of guilt they felt as refugees for not taking part in Ukraine’s life-and-death struggle against its larger neighbor. All of those interviewed said that as soon as Irpin’s Nuestro Tango studio reopened, they signed up to help cope with the war, which is taking its toll also on those who’d managed to escape the fighting.
“You just want to live, more so than in normal times,” says Olena Romanova, a 44-year-old pharmacist, who’s had to flee twice—once in 2014 from her home in the eastern Donbas region and again from Irpin in February. “You don’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow.”
