Yuniia's road: when you know your calling from childhood

Yuniia Furman, IDC's senior teacher, belongs to that rare type of person who never went looking for themselves. "I always knew dance was part of my life," she says. "And that I would be not just a dancer but a teacher. It is my calling, my place in this life."

There was no particular "day of realisation" — there was a certainty she compares to her mother's: "My mum always knew who she wanted to be. And I never had any doubt about who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do." For most people the search for their life's work takes years; Yuniia genuinely does not understand how you could not know. And that, in fact, is where her strength as a teacher lies: she did not "end up" in dance — she is at home in it.

Folk training — the base of a versatile dancer

Yuniia's dance road began with folk choreography — nine years of it. Then came contemporary and variety dance, with classical alongside. And it is the folk training she considers the best foundation of all.

"Folk training produces versatile dancers," she explains. "Classical choreography teaches restraint and body control, and those who only studied classical as children often find street styles very hard afterwards. Folk dancers, on the other hand, can usually dance anything." She does not dismiss classical, though: "It is the base. If you want to go into contemporary choreography professionally, you absolutely need it."

Ukrainian folk choreography, she says, also turned out to be an unexpectedly valuable skill — precisely as part of a culture worth passing on.

Performing abroad: an experience that taught her to be clear-eyed

At 17 Yuniia passed an audition and went to dance in a show ballet abroad — her first time outside the country. Her motive was honest and grown-up: independence and financial self-sufficiency. "I liked the format itself: I can do what I love, I can dance — and earn well while I'm at it."

Getting there was not easy. Six months earlier she had failed to win a state-funded place at a dance college — and that became her first serious blow: in her own group she had been a soloist, always in the front line, and here suddenly she "didn't get in". For six months she did not dance at all. And then she pulled herself together, got back in shape — and passed the audition for a company that toured abroad.

She assesses that experience soberly, without romanticising it. On the one hand, independence, a first trip, real earnings for a dancer. On the other, it is commerce and entertainment: "You entertain people. A theatre, a water park, all sorts of venues — anything to give people a good time. Any global artistic development is a question mark there." As a start for someone who wants commercial dance and wants to get on their feet financially, it is an excellent option. But Yuniia's life turned out differently: on that same trip she met her person — and realised she would not be going again. She worked there for three months.

The moment she wanted to leave

There was one moment when Yuniia thought about leaving. Not dance altogether — but at the point when she was moving to Irpin. Before that she had taught for several years in Kryvyi Rih, and saying goodbye to the children hurt so much that she cried and said she would never do this again.

She even tried remote work — and quickly realised it was "not her": "I dream about that format, but it isn't my work. I need to be in the studio." That was when it became finally clear that the studio is not a job that tires you out but a place without which she cannot find herself.

Her benchmark is not one person

Asked who her model teacher is, Yuniia answers that it is a combination of people. Most of all her father: from him she learned how to deal with people, how to move through stages, how to work within a structure — with management and with the people you manage. "I saw a great example of how a person should work within a structure." Good relationships with her parents in general made their contribution.

She mentions separately a former manager who was very fond of her and still asks her to come back — and many Ukrainian choreographers who inspire her today: "In one it's the professional level that appeals to me, in another the way he speaks and carries himself, in a third the staging work. I take from each of them whatever resonates." That, in essence, is her method: not to copy one teacher but to assemble a signature of her own from the best of what she has seen.

Today Yuniia passes that signature on to the children at IDC, now as senior teacher. What that role actually means: "Senior teacher: the work parents never see".