Amidst The War, Kyivs Leading Techno Club Reopens For One Night: ‘The Crowd Today Is Different
KYIV, Ukraine – “Respect my borders,” reads the entry stamp in big bold black letters pressed against my arm.
Here, a large courtyard is flanked on one side by a crumbling brick building over a century old and on the other by a new stainless steel addition to the yellow building. Techno spins through the open doors of the main techno club building in Kiev, Ukraine.
The universe has no official name. Located in a former brewery on the outskirts of Kiev, the club's logo and de facto identification mark is a mathematical symbol, ∄, used in high-level computers to represent the value of a non-existent formula. It also reflects the club's interest in self-promotion, which is non-existent. By pronunciation and reference, Kyiv's techno community knows ∄ as "K41", combining the street name and house number of the place.
And in keeping with the meaning of the ∄ symbol, the club's team members do not want to invest themselves in the club's wider history; They prefer to remain anonymous and peripheral to their place and community. "Instead," some of the band members explained to Billboard , "we're all just members of Team ∄."
Although initially intended to remind guests that despite the world of events within the club, personal boundaries must be maintained and respected, my entry stamp ban took on new meaning after the large-scale invasion of part of Russia in February. It is a reminder that Ukraine is in an existential struggle for its existence.
Ongoing Attack wrapped ∄'s latest season, Dance.Delivery, just two days before its scheduled opening weekend this past February. But on October 15, after nearly eight months of war, ∄ reopened for the first time in Kiev, restarting the canceled season in a defiant display of Ukrainian resilience during the war.
At the October 15 event, hundreds of clubbers, mostly dressed in black, took to the court. For many, for the first time in about eight months, the club offers an outlet for the joy and freedom that comes from dancing together. ∄ A team member said: “Today's audience is different. Clear relief filled the space. "Less bare body," she joked. "Maybe it's the first opportunity, maybe because of today's music. It's quieter."
Much of the original material of the building has been preserved. Dance floors and sound systems are woven into the architecturally sophisticated interior of the brasserie, which consists of nine separate dance spaces that can accommodate over 15,000 attendees in total. Mosaics of original 1870s logos are juxtaposed with polished glass and tiled DJ booths, and pits that once housed massive copper vats for brewing have been transformed into giant pool-like seating.
The front line of the war is hundreds of kilometers from the capital of Ukraine. And while the city is slowly removing concrete-and-sand checkpoints and steel vehicle barriers erected at the start of the Russian invasion, the decision to reopen and restart the canceled season was not an easy one. not.
Explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of October 10, days before a scheduled reopening, as Russian rockets and missiles hit civilian targets in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. At least eight people were killed and dozens injured in the attack on Kiev. Team ∄ wrestles with a desire to revive techno in Kyiv. Can they resume the canceled season of Dance Delivery? Will they continue the event?
All of Ukraine is currently under martial law in response to Russia's aggression, providing the necessary legal framework to restrict movement during wartime. Men of military age are prohibited from leaving the country, and large gatherings such as sporting events are prohibited.
After deciding to move forward, the team members decide to leave the opening to dance. Campaign for several hundred participants, one of the event spaces is open to keep the event intimate and concerned about the safety of guests amid possible Russian bombing. . And instead of hosting a typical nighttime event, the venue opens at 12:00 and closes before 10:00pm to avoid disrupting the night time restrictions across the city of Kyiv.
Practical hurdles also had to be overcome. At the onset of the Russian invasion, the ∄ team members took advantage of the old brewery's thick concrete and brick architecture and converted the building into an ersatz bomb shelter and temporary shelter for displaced people. The sound equipment and DJ booths were moved to make room for bunk beds and bunk beds.
A sound engineer at ∄ expressed concern that the sound equipment would fail due to exposure to moisture during approximately eight months of storage. "If the power goes out because of a blackout or something," he said, referring to the small but real possibility of an explosion somewhere in the city, "we have generators back." We'll be fine."
Dance.Delivery's first composition was probably anything but ordinary, but it was a challenging and phenomenal success. As the afternoon turned into evening, the dancers slowly filled with ∄ ∄, a group of young and fresh faces ∄ mixed with a crowd of veterans, all moving in the sets of Ukrainian artists Contrast and Human Margarita. Three flavors of clothing dominate: black and white, leather and mesh, and little.
A small but growing scene
The Ukrainian techno scene is smaller than in other European cities, but it is growing and no less energetic. Although relatively new, ∄ offers a space that is easy to miss in the techno communities of Berlin or London. In a former Kiev brewery, clubbers and dancers enjoy the freedom to experience music, dance and community, only boundaries set for them by other visitors are strictly adhered to.
For Vlad Shust, a feisty 20-something drag queen and one of the club's many regulars, ∄ is a very meaningful place, and not just for the music. "Before K41 opened, I never felt like I had a place to belong," says Shust between breaks on the dance floor. Shust ∄ is there because the universe opened in 2019 and is closely related to ХІТЬ in 2019, which translates to "longing" and is the name of a series of strange regular parties that the club held before the Russian invasion.
"I can show my inner creator and be fully accepted by the people around me. I can really be myself, really be myself," she says of ∄' while hemming the hem of a heartwarming dress she wore in front of the Russian invaded, pulled up. , especially to dance For the first installment. ∄ "After the war, I didn't have time to realize how important [the club] was to me," Shust added, brushing the curls of a homemade headdress adorned with braided black bundles away from her face.
However, he admits that initially, after the rocket attack, he did not plan to return to ∄. "I felt like I was dancing on people's graves," she says.
∄ After long discussions with organizers and friends, Shust concluded that restarting is a priority. After the rocket attack on the capital, "we were very focused on the dead," Shast said. And while that's understandable for a community facing the challenges of war, "we have to focus on the survivors," she says.
Shast praised the decision to reopen. It wasn't until the middle of the party, "when I had a moment of solitude, that I fully felt what the Russians had taken from me," says Shast. The attack, he continued, "took away my ability to share art, my ability to connect with people, my ability to connect with my community."
For him, that night on the ∄ dance floor was a celebration of life, not an anniversary of death.
A band with Berghain and German Ravers
Germany has deep ties to space. The founders of ∄ used the same group that designed Berghain in Berlin, the techno capital of the world, for their space. In 2020 and 2021 Berliners traveled a lot to Kyiv to escape Germany's strict covid lockdown and Berlin's closed techno clubs.
Capturing both the niche trends of the techno scene and the growing international audience being ∄ drawn into its orbit; It explains how different drugs can interact when taken together, how to prevent overdose and hangovers, and how to handle consensual sex at parties. Other cards detail what to do if arrested by the police, civil rights and how Ukrainian police can interact with people on the street.
Several members of the ∄ group took refuge in Berlin during the early days of the Russian invasion. And while Germany is grateful for initial aid to Ukrainians fleeing war, many Ukrainians who arrived in Germany had deeply depressing, even disturbing experiences during their stay.
"Before the Russian invasion, I thought Europeans were very privileged," a ∄ team member said over a beer at a ∄ bar. "Affordable health insurance and a high standard of living" are certainly admirable things, he says as he takes out his beer and deliberately sets it down on the bar. "But now I know that the beneficiaries are the Ukrainians."
When I asked him why, he looked me straight in the eye. In this war, "Ukrainians know that pacifism is not an option," he said, which caused outrage in some European countries in Ukraine in general and Germany in particular.
Anger is especially strong in the face of calls for the laying down of arms and immediate peace. ∄ Many team members find the views increasingly at odds with the reality of the Ukrainian battlefield, where civilians are systematically targeted and brutal Russians are in evidence. War crimes continue to rise in the recently liberated towns and villages.
While some of the roughly 130 ∄ team members are still abroad, many have returned to Ukraine, on return trips that brought them back to the war-torn country. The reasons for their return are varied, but one member of the bar crew claims that some of their security guards have joined the Ukrainian army and are now fighting on the front lines.
∄ He leaves everything behind his friends and family who are fighting at the front. This first Dance.Delivery event ended up raising 150,855 Ukrainian hryvnias (about $4,100) through donations. The money went to the hospital's Paramedic Group, a Ukrainian organization of volunteer paramedics.
Just two days after the first episode of Dance.Delivery, another series of explosions hit central Kiev, affecting cultural sites, the city's main electrical substation and other unknown infrastructure. military The attack, which killed at least four people and injured dozens more, was a stark reminder that conflict elsewhere in the country, despite the weekend's rush, was far from over.
"Our building survived two world wars," says ∄ one of the team members. "I hope he survives this war too." However, despite the alarms and air raid blasts, ∄ and Kiev lived and danced one night.
