60 minutes overtime
january 2022 they're going about their lives by march
they're living in a completely different country often away from their parents
their lives have really been turned on its head one constant is they're able to continue dancing
our story this week is about the world of ballet in particular how it's become
a front and unlikely front in the war in ukraine
olga schmiernova is a rock star she's a beyonce of the ballet world prima ballerina and she was with
the bolshoi company the famous theater in moscow she is russian by birth she has this celebrity
dancer status in russia and when the war started she spoke out against it left the country she's
now in amsterdam dancing with a completely different company it's really a remarkable
show of principle of courage you cannot be interested in politics until the moment
when politics will be interested in you right so
it was the the event when you couldn't ignore you just needed to make a choice how's your family
doing you mean in saint petersburg they're good i hope i can find the opportunity to see them
as soon as possible because i miss them it was shock for them and also for them it's incredible
that they leave the ball showing because they think the bolshoi is the best theater in the world
and how i could dare to to leave this theater sounds like you you knew what the consequences
were when you made that decision yes i realized i cannot come back to russia it's very brave of you
in one way i didn't have a choice for me it was pretty much clear ted branson is head of the dutch
national ballet in amsterdam he described olga to us as this this uber celebrity this a-lister
tell us about the first time you saw olga smirnova first time i saw olga was when she was in school
still she was in graduate class and she was just the most remarkable creature i'd ever seen
in terms of such a beautiful ballerina there was something ethereal about her and something
almost invulnerable about her it was very rare to see that quality just how prominent
was she within the bolshoi she is probably the top well one of the two top ballerinas
there is vaswellanos who's in parliament and who's uh closely associated with putin
and then there's august minova since olga schmidt left the bolshoi putin he's executing a war but he
also has has such a concern for what's happening at the bolshoi that reportedly he is installing
his own loyalists to to take over the bolshoi so it goes to show just how tied this theater
in ballet is to russian politics in the wake of the war olga schmiernova says i'm out i can't
abide by this well she's not the only dancer to have relocated as a result of this conflict the
circumstances are obviously different this was done with some some help and with some
brokering but a number of young top ukrainian dancers sort of uh olga schmiernova aspirants
have left the country as well under different circumstances but also on account of this war
we met five of these young ukrainian dancers who had the good fortune of landing in amsterdam we
met dima and maria and sophia they came together with one parent in a car the odyssey to get there
from the traffic jams leaving ukraine to having to go through warsaw i mean in some cases this
1200 miles took a full week we met paulina who figures prominently in our piece we met
katja as well who turned 18 the very day the war began on february 24th who had photos of
herself and basically what amounted to you know a fallout shelter and what you saw were
five kids that are dealing with an awful lot but they've gotten to keep dancing
the overriding principle is i can't not dance for me bali is freedom while i dancing i can
it's a kind of speaking it's speaking with movements what do you remember about the first
few days of the invasion of the war i tried to continue to train my muscles dancing underground
you were dancing underground yeah where were you dancing
in the floor in a basement in underground yeah what's going on now in this ballet world
is really destabilizing and we we call it a front of this this war in ukraine and
obviously you really see the after effects you really see the reverberations of a war
dances will go on choreographers will go on the the work will continue theaters ballet
companies they have survived worse they have survived famines revolutions two world wars
i think they will survive this art's gonna triumph art's gonna always triumph in the end