On Friday 18th June 2010 nearly one hundred people came to the Ukrainian Community Centre to enjoy a Ukrainian style evening.
Four types of Borsch were on offer. These tasty varieties of borsch were made by our very own Ukrainian cook Osyp Galawyn, also known as “Joe”.
ABOVE: Borsch being served by Marie Cuda, Mary Hughes and Alex Zukiwskyj.
ABOVE: Friends enjoying the fun atmosphere, whilst watching the big screen showing all Ukrainian video clips.
ABOVE: Two of our barmen for the evening Viktor Voytinov and Ostap Kurlak were run off their feet all night as guests sampled all the different types of Ukrainian drinks. We had eight types of Ukrainian spirits and three types of Ukrainian beer, and not to mention the Aussie stuff as well!
ABOVE: Bernadette Artymko (second from the left), Canadian-Ukrainian and now local Ukrainian brought her friends along to enjoy the Ukrainian borsch, drinks and atmosphere.
ABOVE: The newly formed Ukrainian Community Folkloric ensemble sang two songs before Yuliya Rai performed. The first song was “Oj Chyj To Kin Stoit” and the second “Oj Scho To zh Za Shum’ it was sung in English and Ukrainian!
Marusia Maccormick, Lyudmila Kelloway Olga Lutsenko, Stephan Chomyn and George Sawczak sang in the folkloric ensemble and stayed in costume for the whole evening to add even more character to the Ukrainian atmosphere of the evening.
Most people would know Olga Lutsenko for her colourful Ukrainian paintings, and Lyudmila for classical singing, but we were so surprised as to how they can sing in the folk style, just like in the villages of Ukraine. This type of singing is rare to hear in Australia and the idea of forming a folk style ensemble to give an opportunity for all to enjoy the live folk singing experience is yet another way in which we can connect with and preserve our Ukrainian heritage.
ABOVE: Special guest contemporary Ukrainian singer Yuliya Rai performed a number of songs including favourite Ukrainian songs like “Chervona Ruta”, “Hutsulko Ksenju”, “Dva Kolory”. The audience absolutely loved her singing and just had get up and dance.
ABOVE: Yuliya with her guitarist performing songs in English, such as: “Sway”, “I will survive”, “I feel good’, and ”Pokerface”
Later in the evening classical singer Likarissa Dmitriyeva-Brooker (Lyric Soprano) new to our community performed the song that she performed at the Sviato Heroiw concert.Likarissa sang ‘Hlyboka Kyrnitsja’ with accompaniment on piano accordion by Stephan Chomyn. This was a nice surprise for the audience.
Members of the audience that were at the Sviato Heroiw concert also wanted to hear both of our classical singers perform “Misjats na Nebi” again.
ABOVE: Classical singer Lyudmila Kelloway (Mezzo-Soprano) joined Likarissa (Lyric Soprano) on stage to sing “Misjats Na Nebi” together. Wow what powerful sound!
Later on that evening and after few more horilka’s, the Ukrainian folk ensemble started the crowd off with a Ukrainian sing-along (Karaoke). The words to these songs appeared on the big screen for everyone to follow and to sing-along. For the Australian guests we also sang popular songs in English.
Such an amazing Ukrainian style evening with good food, drink, entertainment and hospitality. One of the committee members received the following text message the next morning from one of the guests:” I felt like in Ukraine and not in Brisbane, thank you for a wonderful evening”.
We have such talented people from Ukraine within our community, and we welcome their involvement!
More photos (click on a photo below to be taken to the full gallery):