Mind and Movement

Denys Drozdyuk's determination and intellect made him a world ballroom dance champ

By Olena Wawryshyn

 “It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe,” said Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish-born British historian and essayist. Some people are well into adulthood when they discover their vocation, but dancer Denys Drozdyuk knew his by the age of four.

In 1989, Drozdyuk’s parents took him to his first ballroom dance class at a community centre in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.  That day was a momentous turning point for him. “I remember holding my parents’ hand while walking in the dance hall that wonderful sunny day. From that point on, dancing became life to me,” he says.

“If I knew then what would happen today with me, I would light candles for the spirit of the day,” he wrote in an essay about his life and his career, which has taken him across the world and has seen him winning numerous world champion titles.

The soft-spoken dancer with dark hair and brooding eyes is physically smaller and more reflective than one would expect a performer to be.  But speaking to him at an interview at The New Pathway office, it soon becomes clear that Drozdyuk has a philosophic bent that has given him the drive to succeed in a fiercely competitive environment, the foresight to take the steps required to further his career and the maturity to not only adapt but thrive in new environments.

The 21-year-old’s career has already seen four epochs, each in a different country.  In the first period, in Ukraine, the young Drozdyuk excelled at dancing and was enrolled in a music school at age six. While at the school, he made it to the top-three dance ranking for his age group in Ukraine.

His early years in Ukraine had a profound impact on his development, he says.

“It’s very important to have a cultural background or base. Ukraine and my Ukrainian background have given me an identity,” he says.

Political events and the economic situation in Ukraine in the 80s also had an impact on him. “I experienced the crumbling of the Soviet Union, the proclamation of independence and the turmoil that followed. Life during the reconstruction has forced me to grow up early….to be responsible,” he adds.

“There was not a lot of money in our family and generally all around people were poor. We had to face the fact that we didn’t get all the luxuries that are taken for granted here. We had to face the fact that if we want to achieve something we have to take it in our own hands,” says Drozdyuk.

Drozdyuk says he recalls that his mother took on extra jobs in the evenings in Ukraine to pay for his dancing.  Now a lecturer at a college in Toronto, she herself had a love of dance and had attended a dance academy in Kyiv. His father, an electronic engineer, has also always been supportive of Drozdyuk’s career.

This attitude that one has to work hard and be responsible for one’s own destiny to succeed was something he brought into the second epoch of his career, which started when Drozdyuk, at the age of 12, moved to Toronto with father and brother, joining his mother who arrived there two years previously.  In Canada, Drozdyuk quickly settled into his new life. He attended a school in west Toronto, where he consistently made the honour roll, while keeping up his dance training by taking classes in ballet, jazz, tap and acrobatics at the Sean Boutilier Academy of Dance.

During this time, he began to question his devotion to dance: “I asked: ‘Why am I doing this?  Is it because I have always been doing this or am I doing this because I like to do it?’” he says.

Drozdyuk wrote the questions down, pondered over them and “then I waited for answers to crystallize,” he says.  Realizing that dance was for him a personal affinity rather than a routine imposed by his parents, he began to approach his career with a renewed vigour.

He won a Canadian ballroom dancing championship, but “I was hungry for more,” he says. “I understood that only in Europe could I get the best training for my particular field of dance, and that is why I started to look for a new dancing partner in Europe,” he adds.

Through the internet, he found a dance partner, Polina Kolodizner, in Berlin. After Drozdyuk’s parents had numerous conversations with Kolodizner’s parents, the Drozdyuks decided to take a huge risk and allow their 14-year-old son to move to Germany on his own.

The move marked the third major period in his career. In Berlin, Drozdyuk lived in a cramped apartment with the Kolodizner family who had two children, Polina and a toddler.  “The family had different rules, moral standards and worked in a very different way,” says Drozdyuk.

Yet, once again, Drozdyuk demonstrated steely determination and maturity well beyond his years; he quickly adjusted and thrived.  In Germany, he won seven German dance championship titles and three world championship titles, learned German and attended the John F. Kennedy School where he completed an American High School diploma program. Though he had to fit in his studies into a busy schedule revolving around dancing, he graduated in 2003 with distinction and earned an award for international diploma overseas studies.

After high school, he studied at a private college in Germany while furthering his ballroom career, with Polina as his partner.  “But I longed to attend a more rigourous and more professional institution.”

He applied to the Juilliard School and Fordham University, and, to his surprise and “great joy,” he got offered a full scholarship to both.

Now in the fourth epoch of his career, Drozdyuk is enjoying life in New York because the environment at Juilliard allows him to focus on dance and offers intellectual challenges.  “It’s like living in a monastery…I wake up, stretch, eat and go straight to the school were we have ballet, modern dance, humanities, music theory…rehearsals…It usually takes until 8 or 9 at night,” he says describing a typical day.

When he graduates, Drozdyuk hopes to dance in a company, then work as a choreographer.

Yet, displaying his characteristic hunger for working out not only his body but also his mind, Drozdyuk says he reads books on his philosophy and plans to take philosophy courses at the University of Toronto this summer with the aim of possibly completing a graduate degree in that field sometime in the future.

“You have to have a dream, even if it is unrealistic,” says Drozdyuk explaining one of the guiding principles of his own life.  If you set a high dream, you will likely achieve more than if you set out at a start with low expectations he explains.  “You must follow your heart and thought,” he asserts.

In a conversation, Drozdyuk makes these types of reflective comments often. Through his actions, it is clear that he lives by his principles.

As a dancer, Drozdyuk has achieved a high level of success in his dance career due to his physical talent. But, it is his reasoning skills and reflective nature that have enabled him to stand out from his peers.