Oksana Mitrakova won four gold medals the first time she went to the All-Ukrainian Dance Sports Contest in Dnipro. Since then, her collection of awards has been growing, and currently includes around 70. In December 2016, she claimed four gold medals at the European Dance Sports Championship in Odesa. And in November 2017 she became three-times Arabic dance champion of Ukraine at an event in Kyiv. The fact that 15-year-old Oksana is being raised only by her grandma and grandpa and that they live in the front line city of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, is no obstacle for her.
“When shots started to be fired in our city in 2014, we hid in the basement under our garage. My grandma even shot a video of this moment. The buildings in our city center are still destroyed, everything burned down. We still hear shots fired in the evenings, but not at us. Sometimes we hear the windows rattle. We’re used to it now.
Sometimes, we’re let go from training when there is shooting.
I’ve had dances in my head since I was five. I just want to dance. Every time I hear music, I want to start dancing.
At first, I was very shy. We had a chair in our living room and my grandma would sit there while I danced.
My grandma is my biggest help. If I get upset, she always gives me an advice and tells me what to do. My grandma encourages me: ‘You can do it, granddaughter!’ She travels to nearly all of the competitions with me.
But all these trips would have been impossible without the help of my grandpa. He worked in a mine for 40 years and retired only recently.
When I look at the medals I have hanging on the wall, I think about the work behind all them. I have my grandma and my grandpa and my trainers to thank for all of them.
To become a good dancer, you need to listen to the trainers, when they tell you about your mistakes. I don’t get upset. On the contrary, I’m thankful. I listen very carefully so that when I dance the next time, I can try and fix them.
Usually, I have a two-three hour training a day: stage dances, sport dance, Arabic dance, gymnastics and acrobatics.
Sometimes, training is difficult, but I tell myself that it’s what I need, and do it.
When I come out on stage, I don’t see anybody. I have only one thought in my head – I must win. I’m filled with joy and so many emotions.
Contact with the audience is a must. For the Arabic dance, you need to keep to the center on stage. But if you improvise, you need to make a square – a square is when you move around the stage to incite interest of the audience.
The audience reacts and you can see it. When I start playing with emotions, they laugh and look sincere. The jury also sometimes laugh and applauds. You feel right away that they like you, and you start dancing even better.
The trainer comes up with the costume ideas. He comes up with the dance and with the costume for the dance. If the costume is not very good, you get points deducted, same as for the makeup and hairdo. For example, the skirt for the Arabic dance must be so long that 15-20 cm of fabric lies on the floor. If it’s too short, you get points deducted.
Recently I had a costume for the Arabic dance made for me: long, heavy and with feathers. Nineteen meters of fabric was used for it. It cost UAH 5,000.
The most important thing in life for me is to learn to dance even better, and to enroll in a higher learning institution to become a choreographer. This is my childhood dream.
I’ve been choreographing dances for different performances in school for three years. We then perform them at a city event. Once we traveled to Svyatohirsk with a performance.
I want our Ukraine to prosper. It seems to me that every person must do sports. To be an active person is good for everything. Even your character changes with it. You become more tolerant and confident.
I want peace for our planet, no war and no shooting. That would be wonderful for everyone.”
