KYIV City Ballet comes to Bath Theatre Royal on Sunday 16th April with A Tribute to Peace on their first ever tour of the UK. There will be two performances at 3pm and 7.30pm.

The programme features excerpts from some of the company’s favourite classical ballets, including Swan Lake, La Bayadère and Le Corsaire, as well as folk and modern dance. All profits from the performances will be donated to charity.

Kyiv City Ballet’s exceptional dancers were on tour in Paris last February, preparing to perform The Nutcracker as part of a much-anticipated two-week tour of France, when Russia invaded their homeland.

They have been unable to return since, after the full-scale war in Ukraine left them stranded. Making the best of a difficult situation, the company spent the rest of 2022 performing throughout Europe, the United States and the Middle East, spreading a message of peace, hope and resilience to enthusiastic audiences.

With extraordinary resilience, the company has gone from strength to strength. Over a year on, and with no end to the war in sight, the company remains in exile and plans to continue touring throughout 2023.

Kyiv City Ballet was founded in 2012 by Ivan Kozlov, the company’s current general director. Over the past decade, the company has performed on four continents and built a reputation as Ukraine’s finest ballet company. It has more than 25 ballets in its repertoire, including some of the best-known classical ballets – Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and The Nutcracker – as well as neoclassical pieces including Tribute to Peace.

Ivan Kozlov, who graduated in Kyiv, is a former leading principal dancer of the Mariinsky Theater, the National Opera of Ukraine, the St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet and International Ballet Theater.

Photograph by Julie Nash