As the dancers make their way to rehearsal, air-raid sirens blare throughout Kharkiv. When the city first came under siege, the alarms would have sent them rushing to the nearest underground shelter, where they'd wait out the shelling.
Now, more than day s later, the dancers have learned to ignore the sirens. The wails have become part of their soundtrack as they prepare for showtime in Ukraine's easternmost major city, only 15 miles from the Russian border. By mid-afternoon, nine women have gathered around the dance pole at Flash Dancers, the only women-owned exotic dance club in Kharkiv.
Prostitution is illegal in Ukraine, putting strip clubs in a legal gray area. But the law was seldom enforced even before the war β the country boasted one of the most thriving sex-tourism scenes in Eastern Europe, with an estimated 80, sex workers in Today, with Kharkiv's police preoccupied with defending the city from Russian saboteurs and helping with the fallout of missile strikes, Ukrainians seem to accept that a modicum of vice might need to be tolerated, or even embraced, amid the grinding austerity of war.
Under the club's dim red lighting, Valeriya leads the dancers through a rehearsal as Christina Aguilera's "Express" blares over the PA:. One dancer looks stupefied. She tries the move but barely gets airborne before stumbling. Over the next two hours, with indefatigable drill-sergeant precision, she works the dancers through each pop and pirouette of the routine, as Aguilera's power ballad plays on a seemingly endless loop:.
All ladies confident, flaunt it Boys throw it up if you want it Can you feel me? Can it feel it? It's Burlesque. Valeriya shouts the last line as she navigates the dancers through the song, changing "burlesque" to "Flash Dance. The signs of war are everywhere. The windows on the three floors above the club remain boarded up after an explosion last year in the center of Kharkiv shattered every window on the block. Because Flash Dancers is in the basement, it doubles as an air-raid shelter, where staff members and tenants living above the club can wait out rocket strikes in the red-leather booths surrounding the dance pole.
