They might be dancers, but make no mistake. The young men and women in the Kupalo Ukrainian Dance troupe from Edmonton are dedicated athletes.

“Ukrainian dance is one of the most physically demanding types of dance out there,” says Susan Fitch, a parent leader for the group, which operates out of St. Basil’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Alberta’s capital city.

“To be at this level, they kids have been dancing since age six at least,” Fitch says. “They’re all very fit. They dedicate hours every week to dancing.”

Fitch would know. She and her husband Travis danced for two years as adults, and all of Fitch’s children were part of the Kupalo troupe. Now, she has grandkids following in the family footsteps.

The group that will be in Jasper for Canada Day is the junior troupe, with dancers aged 13-15. They’ll soon graduate to the senior Kupalo group, open to dancers up to age 19 and from there, some of the best will continue on with the world-renowned Shumka dancers. Don’t let the young age of the Jasper-bound performers put you off, however.

“They’ll be giving you everything that they have,” Fitch says. “They will do all the adult dances at a youth level, if you know what I mean. They are young, but they’re not doing any children’s dances.”

The group will even break out the Hopak — Ukraine’s national dance and the style most widely associated with cultural dancing troupes like Shumka or Kupalo.

“The Hopak is the dance you’ll see any time there is a celebration or a performance,” Fitch says. “My understanding of it is that it is the most difficult dance, the one where the men use their impressive acrobatics.”

There’s much more than high kicks and leaps, however. 

“There are 13 regions of the Ukraine and the dancers will be performing representative dances from all over the country,” says Travis Fitch. “They change costumes from region to region.”

Despite the fact that the dancers are far removed from the source material in terms of both time and space, an impressive amount of effort is made to ensure a high level of verisimilitude, according to Fitch.

“They make a great deal of effort to keep everything authentic,” he says. “People in the Ukraine are often surprised that we were able to maintain these traditions for more than 100 years, because they weren’t able to continue.”

Indeed repression of national and regional costumes, music and folk dances during the Soviet era has helped make Edmonton’s troupes among the world leaders when it comes to cutting edge Ukrainian dance.

While still very true to the roots of the regional routines, Kupalo’s style has been influenced by a sea change in approach brought about nearly 30 years ago by the Shumka troupe.

“At first girls and men danced separately,” Fitch explains. “Ukrainian dance originally got started as calisthenics in the army. One fellow would show what he could do, and the others would try to top it.”

In the meantime, female dancers were focused on synchronicity and graceful, slow movements. When Shumka upped the tempo for the women in their troupe, other groups followed suit. As a result, both sexes are given a thorough workout during the course of a full Kupalo performance.

“Some of the people you’ll see in Jasper will end up in Shumka,” Fitch adds. That means even more time on 

the road, and more time reliving the traditions of their ancestors.