Vasyl Avramenko

Vasyl Kyrylovych Avramenko (; sometimes transcribed as Vasile) (March 22, 1895 – May 6, 1981) was a Ukrainian actor, dancer, choreographer, balletmaster, director, and film producer, credited with spreading Ukrainian folk dance across the world. Colourful, energetic, imaginative, and, quite often exasperating, he was an impresario greatly reminiscent of The Music Man. For his unparalleled missionary zeal and his love of Ukrainian culture, he is considered by many to be the "Father of Ukrainian Dance".

Early days Vasyl Avramenko was born on March 22, 1895, in Stebliv,

Avramenko with dancing school with the great Ukrainian artist Mykola Sadovsky.

By spring of 1919, Avramenko was for a short time in Stanyslaviv, a member of Yosyf Standnyk's theatre before joining Mykola Sadovsky's troupe. During this time, he was able to apply some of the lessons he had learned in the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv. In the fight between the Bolshevik and White Russian Armies, Avramenko served in the Central Telegraph Administration of the Ukrainian People's Republic. When UNR forces retreated west in 1919–20, he remained in Soviet occupied territory and worked with Ukrainian itinerant troupes of actors that continued to tour the region. He was arrested at this time and interned in Kalisz. Avramenko decided to stay in Toronto, and opened his first dance school in North America in St. Mary's Roman Catholic hall, today the Factory Theatre building. For fees from five to thirty dollars, he offered a set of lessons for pre-schoolers to grown-ups. The school inculcated its pupils with Ukrainian pride and identity. His troupe first performed, the year after his arrival, at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) August 30 through September 11 to grandstands filled with up to twenty-five thousand spectators. When the dancers gave a special performance at the women's pavilion, Florence Randal Livesay spoke glowingly about Ukrainian folk dancing. Avaramenko's name now became coupled with that of Koshyts in the Ukrainian-Canadian press. Articles about him appeared in every major Ukrainian-Canadian newspaper, as well as the English ones. This publicized his arrival, and he opened a school shortly thereafter. By April 30, Avramenko and 275 of his pupils performed at Winnipeg's amphitheatre, a venue usually reserved for hockey and politics.

Avramenko and his disciples began to set up schools quickly across the prairies, in Saskatoon, Yorkton, and Edmonton. Their base of support was a strong Ukrainian-Canadian community. For example, some 20 Ukrainian public school teachers attended his Edmonton classes, and Avramenko gave them instructions on how to teach dance when they returned to their schools. When he was finished teaching in a town, he would assign a leader to continue teaching to the residents. One of these leaders was Chester Kuc, who founded the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers in 1959, and Cheremosh Ukrainian Dance Company in 1969.

On June 16, 1928, Avramenko married one of his star dance pupils, Pauline Garbolinsky, from Winnipeg, and soon the couple was living in New York City. With a network of dance schools across Canada, Avramenko now turned his sites to the United States. Lacking business acumen, he had debts in excess of three thousand dollars upon leaving Canada. Without a Hollywood distributor, the film company rented theatres at high cost to show the film. In the end, though an artistic success, the film left Avramenko in further debt. Koshyts was particularly critical of the film, finding it offensive and tasteless. Not surprisingly, his review appeared in Svoboda. It sounded very much like a personal attack. No doubt Avramenko's personality had got under Koshyts' skin when they had toured together. Koshyts' criticism was not without merit. Avramenko, despite his rhetoric to develop a Ukrainian film industry, had brought in people and resources from outside the community in order to make the film. In fairness though to Avramenko, these resources did not exist in the Ukrainian community at that time.

Cossacks in Exile

Unable to raise money in New York due to the financial setback of his last film, he turned to Canada to raise the funds for his next feature film Cossacks in Exile. On September 22, 1937, Avramenko returned to Winnipeg, and announced the creation of the Ukrainian Film Corporation. At this distance from New York, audiences had seen and loved his film Natalka Poltavka, but knew nothing about the questionable financial state in which it had left its shareholders, and Avramenko. Appealing unabashedly to patriotic Ukrainian sentiment, Avramenko sold rights to screen the new film province by province.

Later life The remaining years of his life, Avramenko spent hauling around film canisters, showing his films or outright selling them wherever he disembarked. In 1954 he released the documentary film "The Triumph of Ukrainian Dance", consisting primarily of excerpts from documentaries and feature films produced by him during the 1930s.