Czech circus offers haven to student troupe from Kyiv

Prague — Ukrainian circus students handed out borscht and showcased some of their country's customs in a joint performance on Tuesday night with Prague’s Cirk La Putyka, which gave two dozen teenage students a new home after they fled Kyiv.

The Prague contemporary circus company answered a call for help from the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Performing and Circus Arts after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, providing training space, lodging, food and arranged English lessons.

The group includes a teacher and two students’ mothers, deputy rector of the school, Nina Araya, said. “Twenty-five teenagers came from a very stressful situation, their parents are still in a place where the war is,” she said.

“They are communicating every day, they are super-stressed and it is not easy, it is not easy even for adults. What we are trying to do is to focus them on their profession.”

At their joint fundraising event in a former Prague slaughterhouse on Tuesday, Czech and Ukrainian artists showed a part-spoken, part-acrobatic, part-pantomime performance they had just two days to practise.

“We are turning into a performance what we have lived through here in the past three weeks and what we are living through now, using metaphor and images,” Cirk La Putyka director Rosta Novak said.

This was a one-off show but more performances are likely to be developed in the coming weeks, he said.

Cirk La Putyka supports the students, along with donations. “People contact us wanting to help, by bringing furnishings for their accommodation, others bring food. It will be tough but I didn’t hesitate for a second, none of us did,” Novak said.

Oleh Vakal, 16, from the city of Krivyi Rih in central Ukraine, said it was tough to focus given his family remained back home. “I hope the war in Ukraine ends and we all go back ... and the next time I come to Prague, we will be performing here about the result of war or something similar, and everything will be all right and good,” he said.

Reuters