He dances as he breathes. He dances out of passion and, since the beginning of the war, for others too. At 59, close-cropped hair, elegant gesture, slender body, dancer and choreographer Oleg Husarenko has lost none of his flexibility or empathy. The stage of his theater is now as big as the south of Ukraine. Magnanimous, eager to contribute to the war effort, he welcomes on his boards, in Odessa and elsewhere, young and old to entertain them and help them forget the cannon thundering on the coast, on the port and in the suburbs. .
On this day, the choreographer joined a small expedition to the village of Vynogradyvka, northeast of Mykolaiv. “From the first day of the war, I said to myself, like the majority of Ukrainians, that it was necessary to help in one way or another the combatants and the civilians, those who are on the front line or around. ” The convoy, cars and minibuses full of food, set off at dawn to join the town just rid of the Russian occupier, withdrawn towards Kherson after the lightning counter-offensive led by Ukrainian soldiers.
The show in the village Vynogradyvka, northeast of Mykolaiv.
Alexandre Gerfaut for L’Express
The village school, which served as a rear base for the Russian intelligence services, becomes for the occasion the epicenter of the party, a fair intended for children and orphans who have just returned. A clown triggers giggles, then a magician attracts the attention of young heads, still immersed in the pangs.
Ballet of Liberty and Independence
“Ukrainian society is the queen of mutual aid, rejoices Julia Pogrebnaya, seven years of humanitarian aid in Africa to her credit. European support has galvanized us.” With tears in his eyes, Oleg organizes the party, distributes parcels and gifts, as a man-orchestra of the humanitarian aid collected by the inhabitants of Odessa. It was also through an eponymous film that he came to dance. The Man Orchestrahis favorite film with Louis de Funès, he saw it at the age of 10, and a hundred times since.
He immediately learned to dance to dedicate his life to it, via the prestigious Podolianka school and that of Odessa. At 14, he is already a professional dancer. At 20, with Maurice Béjart as a model, he concocts shows in the big city of the south and its region. He performs elsewhere in the country and in Switzerland, Italy, Cyprus, with modern or classical choreography, and plays in 25 films to make ends meet.
He was preparing a show about singer Vysotsky and his wife Marina Vlady when the Russian offensive began, which he did not expect. From now on, he is a fighter from the back. Reserve lieutenant, he is a member of a deminers unit and is called several times a week to remove explosive devices on the roads, in the fields, or to defuse the projectiles of the cluster bombs which indiscriminately kill or mutilate civilians. and military. “Putin’s Russia is committing war crimes and it needs to be known, says the choreographer. We are documenting thousands of cases.”
Oleg Husarenko in front of his theater in Odessa.
Alexandre Gerfaut for L’Express
The gigantic mobilization of the rear, young and old, men and women, unemployed, pharmacists, engineers, workers, students, the choreographer-soldier remains astonished. “Everything is perfectly organized, the collection, the distribution, the identification of the needs for medicines, food, means of transport.” He, who sleeps only four hours, patrols several nights a week with Odessa’s territorial defense units to protect the pearl of the Black Sea.
He compares the Ukrainians to an audience made up of several dozen communities in front of a large theater stage which would forget all its differences in order to organize a great ballet, that of freedom and independence. “We have lived together in Ukraine for so long, and now everyone has understood, even the Russians, who was the ogre: the Putin regime.”
In the evening, during a stopover in a canteen of truck drivers, he performs a dance step in front of admiring guests. “I’m going to have to work on my entrechats between two missions!” His double commitment, for the audience and for the stage, is flawless. As a director of charity, Oleg the generous expects a long fight.