By Jasmin Sykes and Kosta Gak, CNN
Kyiv (CNN) — Silhouettes move through dark alleys covered with snow and ice, towards the muffled beat coming from a concrete building in central Kyiv. Inside, a dim red light blurs the faces of a dancing crowd, their sweaty bodies pressed up against one another.
The red glow evokes the low-light torches used by soldiers on the front lines with Russia, hundreds of miles to the east, as they seek to avoid detection by the enemy. But for ravers at Closer, one of Kyiv’s most renowned nightclubs, partying is a way to forget the war – even if just for one night.
“It’s what helps to keep us sane,” Valeriia Shablii, 32, who attended a Closer event held to mark Maslenytsia – a Slavic festival that celebrates the beginning of spring – told CNN. “We say it’s like a war-life balance.”
The war has disrupted much of Ukraine’s cultural life. Many music venues have closed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and some artists have fled while others have joined the armed forces.
Yet Ukrainians are still coming together to party. Closer, which occupies a former ribbon factory, shut down when the war began but re-opened just eight months later, and has run music events almost every weekend since.
Under the constant threat of missile and drone strikes, and after a harsh winter made worse by repeated energy blackouts, dancing has become an emotional outlet for the turmoil of war, Shablii said.
“People are just really tired,” she said. “Coming here and spending some time with your friends… it’s uniting people.”
She says rave culture is alive, if changed, in Ukraine’s major cities and has emerged as a powerful form of resistance during four years of brutal war with Russia.
“It didn’t die,” she said. “We will rave on Putin’s grave.”
Raving and resistance in Ukraine
Even before the war, Ukraine’s electronic dance music scene had long been intertwined with notions of resistance.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Empire in the 1990s, a new era of independence encouraged an openness to Western cultural influences – in parallel with other now-famous European electronic music hotspots like Berlin.
Large-scale parties, squat raves and festivals sprang up across Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, becoming spaces for freedom of expression and musical experimentation.
The emergence of rave culture in Ukraine culminated in the mid-2010s, with the formation of Kyiv’s cult Cxema parties – huge raves held in urban warehouses or under bridges – which would go on to achieve international recognition.
Events were about “creating a safe and democratic space” and “building a community” for disaffected young people suffering economic insecurity in the wake of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, when protesters ousted the then-president Viktor Yanukovych for what they saw as widespread corruption and abuse of power, Cxema’s founder Slava Lepsheiev to