A celebration of Ukrainian New Year’s Eve will return to the Prince Albert area on Jan. 11 when the Prince Albert Barveenok Ukrainian Dancers host their Malanka celebration at Nordale Hall.
Kayleigh Skomorowski, President of the Prince Albert Barveenok Ukrainian Dancers, said the celebration is taking place closer to the actual date of the Julian calendar New Year’s Eve on Jan. 12.
“We went with the traditional what most people have grown up knowing as New Year’s timeline,” Skomorowski said.
The Orthodox church in Ukraine has worked to disassociate itself from the Russian Orthodox Church and in 2024 moved Christmas and New Year’s to the more traditional dates.
“But a lot of people here in Canada, and, I would argue probably everybody out there out in the diaspora, are celebrating Christmas and New Year’s on the Julian calendar,” she explained. “(It’s) a part of how we identify as Ukrainian Canadians. Even though in Ukraine it’s seen as a distancing from Russia, out here, from conversations with a variety of people, it’s a little bit more of the way we kind of identify ourselves as Canadian Ukrainians. (It’s) super backwards, but it is what it is.”
The past two years Elk Ridge Resort hosted their own Malanka celebration and Barveenok danced each year at the event. Skomorowski said that event was out of reach for some people in Prince Albert.
“We really found that with it being out of the city, it really cut off a lot of (people), particularly our newcomer Ukrainians,” she explained. “A lot of them don’t have vehicles or the means to kind of go out to a place like Elk Ridge.”
This year’s celebration at Nordale Hall came about because of Ukrainian Independence Day in Prince Albert.
“I was working on collaborating with some of the new Ukrainians and the Ukrainian community. They had asked about doing a local Malanka,” Skomorowski said.
There has not been a local Malanka in Prince Albert since at least 2019, according to Skomorowski. Veselka has hosted one in the past.
“It’s been quite a few years since we’ve had one here, so we’re kind of working to collaborate together on a community-based event here in Prince Albert,” she said.
The event will include live performances by the Barveenok Ukrainian Dancers, and a performance of the Malanka pageant my members of our Ukrainian community. There will also be food available for purchase (pierogi platter, sausage on a bun) along with a performance by Dean Bernier and his band to keep the dance going into the night.
Skomorowski said the main goal was to make the event as accessible as possible.
“The whole goal with this is not a fundraiser, it’s a community event to bring our community together. There’s food for purchase and we worked on keeping the cost as accessible as we could,” Skomorowski said.
“Our dancers will be dancing and we have a group of community members that will be kind of performing the Malanka pageant. That will be performed in Ukrainian, but we’ll have some English translation available on the tables. It’s really a full collaborative event.”
Tickets are available at Harold’s Family Foods starting $20 for Adults, $15 for children 12 and under, cash only.
Tickets include event entrance and late lunch. Food is available on site for purchase from 5 to 9 p.m.
Skomorowski said they’ve sold about 80 tickets as of Monday morning. They are hoping to sell at least 200 total.
“I’m hoping people are just in their weird phase zone between Christmas and New Year’s and aren’t quite thinking about that yet, but we’ll we will likely still have tickets available at the door if we haven’t sold out the 200 or not,’” Skomorowski said.
The event is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. at Nordale Hall, Skoworowski hopes to see it grow.
“Because we haven’t had this event for quite a while, it I think it’ll it’s going to be harder to get traction,” she said.
