Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
January 5, 1880 In the year one of the greatest artists of Ukraine was born - Vasyl Verkhovynets – composer, actor, singer, choral conductor, choreographer, folklorist and teacher. It was as a choreographer that he managed to raise Ukrainian folk dance to a high technical and artistic level. It is not for nothing that he himself said: “Remember that behind our wonderful song the first word belongs to our folk dance. When we love our sister - song, we will also love her brother - dance”. His dance production received the highest award in London, and Stalin's henchmen tortured and shot the artist.
Vasyl Kostiv (real name) was born in the small village of Stary Mizun, in the Carpathian region. His parents raised their son in the magical sounds of music. His mother sang songs and folk songs, and his father conducted the village choir at the church, in which Vasylko would later sing, having inherited his voice from his mother.
Vasyl simultaneously studied in the music class of the Mykola Lysenko Drama School. In addition to singing, Verkhovynets mastered choreography perfectly. And already in 1910 he made his debut with a dance production of Lysenko's opera "Aeneid". The next and no less successful was the choreographic production of the drama "Stolen Happiness" by Ivan Franko. The air tanks of the freckles in the play "Marusya Boguslavka" enchanted the audience.
Verkhovynets made a significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian folk dance, in particular, by writing an entire manual on the study of folk dance art. The ballet masters of the time highly appreciated Vasyl's work, and Maksym Rylsky called the choreographer a "magician of dance."
In 1923, Verkhovynets published a children's book "Vesnyanochka", which collected children's games with songs, as well as a detailed pedagogical methodology for working with young children. At the same time, Verkhovynets taught choreography at the Lysenko Music and Drama School. Later, he headed the department of art history at the Poltava Institute.
At the end of December 1937, Vasyl Mykolayovych was arrested and accused of involvement in a “counter-revolutionary nationalist organization”. Endless interrogations, torture – Vasyl Verkhovynets signed everything that was presented to him. In the end, he “pleaded guilty” to “direct participation in the organization of an insurrection against the Soviet government”, “in espionage activities in favor of Poland”, “in the restoration of the insurrectionary organization in Poltava and connections with activists of the nationalist organization in Kharkov”. On April 10, 1938, a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Vasyl Mykolayovych to be shot. The sentence was carried out the next day.
Vasyl Mykolayovych Verkhovynets (Kostiv) was rehabilitated only in April 1958 at the request of the Union of Composers of Ukraine.
Tetyana KRYSTOPCHUK,
Ukrainian language teacher
