Ukrainians ready to dance on border

TAYLOR WEAVER EDITOR

The Lloydminster Ukrainian Dancing on the Border Festival returns to the Vic Juba Community Theatre from March 24-26 with almost 500 dancers attending to show off their moves.

Hosted by the Lloydminster Ukrainian Cultural Association (LUCA), the 16th annual festival will feature roughly 475 dancers from 17 clubs across Alberta and Saskatchewan, and a total of 350 routines will be performed over the threeday festival.

“Ukrainian dance is the dance of heritage, culture, and what they would normally do at home, but brings it to the stage for a performance,” said LUCA president and dance festival coordinator

Tara Jarvis.

“We have several different regions they perform from, and we have dancers from four years old up to the adults. It’s pretty amazing and they work hard to get to where they’re at.” dors coming in with some Ukrainian merchandise as well.” in relation to the recent one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

The dance festival is one of LUCA’s two major fundraisers with funds raised through admission helping keep costs down for kids who register to dance with the association.

For Jarvis, the festival is more than just dancing, it’s also about a strong sense of community within a community.

The Ukrainian community is quite big here and there’s lots of support, more than you’d think,” she said.

“It’s very important,” she said. “We are a very proud culture and we are always excited to share it with the public and people who don’t know much about it and are curious.” and from 9 am. until about 4 or 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Jarvis also wanted to thank the many local sponsors as well as the Vic Juba Community Theatre for their continued support.

Daily passes are available for $12, a two-day pass (a combination of any two days) is $20, and a full weekend pass for all three days is $25.

Jarvis was quick to point out the festival is open to the public and invites all to attend, whether you’ve been to the dance festival before or not.

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“Being Ukrainian myself, I know when I first moved to Lloyd it was difficult to get out and meet people, then I found this group and it opened a lot of doors for community involvement.”

She also noted the timeliness of the event

“We are always very grateful to the community for their sponsorship and help to put on this event every year,” she said.

“The Vic Juba is fantastic to work with and we look forward to working with them every year on this.”

The festival runs from 10 a.m. to roughly 9 p.m. on Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday,