RESEARCH HERITAGE OF CHOREOGRAPHERS OF THE 20-th CENTURY
Authors:   Lviv Ivan Franko National University, Department of Directing and Choreography, KUZYK Oleg 
Published: September 2024

The article is prepared based on specific historical and ethnographic materials, information of researchers, and encourages a deeper understanding of the history of the formation of Ukrainian folk dance traditions as a part of Ukrainian traditional culture, the aesthetic and spiritual heritage of the customs of Ukrainians with their regional features, as well as an element of folk creativity in combination with other types of artistic creativity – visual arts (costuming and decoration), song, theater, folklore. Ukrainian folk art is a great treasure and occupies one of the leading places in world culture. In the process of social and human development, the movement towards the improvement of all scientific, technical and economic processes, innovations and new technologies, not so much attention is paid to the cultural content in the course of the formation of national traditions of the people, artistic identity and the study of folklore. Sometimes the return to history, the understanding of all processes, trends of human development, and especially the reproduction of the folk tradition in the art and culture of the nation is relegated to the background, but it is quite important for today. In today’s modernized world, it is important to remember the cultural heritage and heritage of the people in the distant past. Folklore material serves as a foundation for the construction of modern art filled with new content. Ukrainian folk dance fundamentally changed when it began to be performed on stage, as it was transformed into a new art form: Ukrainian folk-stage dance. Thanks to such dance masters as Vasyl Verkhovynets (Kostiv) and Vasyl Avramenko, the attitude of ethnographers and researchers of folk art to folkloric folk dance and traditions of choreographic culture has radically changed. At the beginning of the 20th century they began to actively collect authentic dances of local regions of Ukraine and form the repertoire of creative ensembles. With their theater troupes, they toured Ukrainian lands, conducting group classes in villages, searching for and reviving inherent regional variations. Folk dance was filled with new genres of art and meaningful compositions, was structured according to its forms and types of performance. It was no longer perceived as an emotional expression of improvisational, spontaneous creativity or folklore, but as a separate, full-fledged form of art. A rapid process of development of Ukrainian folk dance began, which in some traditional elements of compositions and performance vocabulary has been preserved to this day and has become a “golden heritage” in the repertoires of dance groups. Regional styles of dance with the corresponding culture of performance and character, technique of movements and complexity of figures, stage vision of dance directors have developed as a result of more and more perfect study and research of dance art. The creation of an extensive system of training choreographers and the use of modern technologies of visual fixation open opportunities for self-analysis and improvement, training of specialists.