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    How to Raise a Champion: An Interview with Ukrainian Dance Master Tetiana Korobka

    Anyone will tell you that being successful in whatever you do takes hard work and dedication. Yet the reality is that it’s true. Tetiana Korobka’s recipe for success has been mostly the same. 

    A star competitive dancer from Ukraine with shelves full of awards in her prestigious Star Dance Studio, she’s worked to raise a generation of winners. Showing up at the studio isn’t the only factor leading to achievement. So what does it take? Drive, passion, curiosity. A desire to try new things. A willingness to fail. Love too, of course. 

    “My students fall in love with dancing thanks to me,” she says. “And many of them chose the profession of choreography and now teach others.”

    We recently sat down with Tetiana to learn about her story, which began somewhat naturally with a loving and talented family in the last year before Ukraine gained its independence and to better understand what it takes to become a champion.

    Tetiana, tell us how it got started. When did you first realize you had a knack for dancing?

    For starters, I have a really creative family. My father sings and plays guitar, and my mother’s a fantastic dancer. Even my brother was involved in ballroom dancing as a child, so I guess that all rubbed off on me. From an early age, I had this great sense of rhythm. 

    I was so flexible and I had a knack for dancing. I just loved dancing. You know what — my first memory is of dancing in a big hall with children standing all around me. So I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t know I was a dancer. I just always was.

    So you got started on your career early. Did you have any education? What was that like?

    Sure. When I was five, I started ballroom dancing. My mother arranged lessons for me, and I spent a year doing that. But street dancing was also becoming more popular, and so when I was six I tried those styles, like hip hop and disco. I just fell in love with them. For me, that’s really when my dance story got started, right there at the Viklen Dance Studio in Ternopil. 

    I was part of the group, and so we participated in different tournaments and festivals. We performed at almost all of the cultural events in our city. I think that really prepared me for working with my students. At a young age, I learned how to succeed on the spot.

    You also started getting involved in aerobics around this time. Was that really necessary with all the dancing you were already doing, or did it help you?

    I was good, though! I was 14 when I started doing sports aerobics, and I became captain of the school’s sports aerobics team. Later, I was even captain of the university team. We did sports aerobics, funk aerobics, fitness aerobics, and step aerobics. 

    I did it because I loved it. I was passionate about it. That’s why I tell my students you have to love doing it. If you don’t enjoy it, then what’s the point?

    What is funk aerobics anyway? I’m trying to imagine this.

    It’s a combination of street styles and aerobics. For fitness aerobics, by the way, I won third place at a Ukrainian Championship in April 2009. We won so many prizes, I have a hard time counting them all. Just at various all-Ukrainian tournaments from 2008 to 2011. 

    I was studying at Ternopil National Economic University at that time. By the way, I also danced in the ballet and got paid for all of this. This was a momentous occasion in my life when I realized that I could support myself by dancing. I was just 18 years old.

    When did teaching enter the picture?

    That happened during my third year of university. It was 2010 and I was offered a job as a dance teacher at a local studio. So by the time I was 20 years old, I was already a coach. I taught hop hop, street jazz and disco for children. 

    I also taught adults. I did that for about four years and then I realized I wanted more. I was ready to move on, so together with another choreographer, we opened a modern dance studio in Ternopil called Star Dance. I liked the challenge actually. I think enjoying challenges is a big part of being successful.

    That still sounds like a big risk.

    Of course it was! We didn’t even have our own place at first, we had to book time in a larger fitness studio. Only three students showed up for the first class. But we worked hard and by the end of the year, there were 12 students. And the numbers only went up. 

    You just have to keep putting in the work and you’ll see the results. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen if you keep working at it. Look — in their first year of training, my kids took 3rd prize in the Ukrainian Open Championship in Kyiv. 

    Ukraine is a huge country with about 40 million people—that’s as many as live in Canada or Poland. So you can imagine how amazing that felt. We also continued to perform around Ternopil, which is a huge city in its own right. I think there are about 215,000 people living here now. This got us more attention, and the Star Dance Studio gained in popularity due to this visibility.

    You were also more in demand as I understand it. You went to teach in public schools.

    Well, they asked me to. I started working as a choreography teacher in four different secondary schools here. You should have seen how the students reacted. They just sparkled. Every holiday, my students would perform different dances, from hip hop to tango, from folk to sensual contemporary. 

    At the end of the school year, I even organized dance flash mobs in each school, in which almost all the students participated. You have to be creative to keep your kids interested. I think that’s another part of success. You are switching things up, keeping it interesting. That was you develop and you rediscover the love you have for the art of dancing. Keeping that love alive inside of you is important.

    How were you able to juggle all that with your work in the studio though?

    A lot of things changed in 2016. We opened two branches of the Star Dance Studio in Ternopil. I continued to run one of them and my colleague ran the other one. But I also got married and pregnant and decided to stop teaching in public schools and to focus just on the studio at that time. That didn’t slow us down. We continued to attend different championships in Ukraine and abroad. 

    In October of that year, my students came in first in the junior category at the European Championship in Modern Dance Sport in Poland.

    My students also won prizes in solo performances in different age categories. In 2019, my students won second and third place in team performances at the World Artistic Dance Federation World Championship in Poland. 

    And one of my students won first place in the Urban Street Dance Solo Male Juveniles category and was awarded the title of World Champion in the WADF organization, as well as a candidate for Master of Sports of Ukraine in sports dance. How did we do that? Through rigorous training schedules. Plus we set objectives for ourselves. If you have a goal, then you have something to work toward. These competitions kept us on our toes. We kept striving.

    You also started to judge competitions, is that right?

    That was also one of those big changes in 2016 that I mentioned. I received a fourth category judge’s license from the UMDF dance organization, which was the Ukrainian branch of the International Dance Organization IDO in Ukraine. 

    Two years later, I got a license from UFSA, which represents WADF in Ukraine. This license was for the highest category. The competition organizers complimented me on my professional work. I also worked as a guest judge at championships such as Mega Dance Beat in Ternopil in 2021 and Dance Boom, which was held in Lviv the same year.

    One final question, is it true that you have also started to organize championships?

    Oh, yes. In 2021, I helped organize the All Stars Championship in Ternopil. About 1,000 people from Ukraine attended it. Participants competed in different dance style categories. There was Street Dance, including vogue, hip hop, street jazz, and dancehall, as well as Contemporary and Free Dance styles. 

    Judging and teaching are similar in that you are trying to encourage dancers to give their best. You can really see which teams have put in the work and who enjoys it and who doesn’t. It’s right in front of you. 

    If they master that secret recipe of hard work, passion and love, then they usually go home with an award. Who doesn’t like someone who’s pumped about what they are doing? That kind of enthusiasm is infectious.

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