AUBURN - Alone in the center of a wooden floor, Larysa Droczak moved without fear through the low kicks and involved footwork of a fast Ukrainian dance.

Unlike the legions of American teenagers who can barely brave the floor of a school gymnasium for awkward freestyle movements, the 12-year-old in a formal black, pink-ribboned dress stepped out of a line of mostly young men and women for a turn at one of the oldest dancing traditions: soloists taking the stage.

The rocking Ukrainian polkas move through the body. “You want to show people how well you can do it,” Droczak said.

During several minutes of keyboardist Vasyl Rawlyk's foot-tapping playing Saturday, the teenagers and 20-somethings took turns in groups of one, two or three going through the coordinated steps of Kolomyka, a fast Ukrainian folk dance.

Sometimes they shifted into group twirls with skipping-like steps. One girl lifted her feet off the ground, carried around the circle by her comrades.

Droczak and her dancing companions were examples of the hope of older Cayuga County Ukrainian Americans who have organized the first formal dinners and dances since the early 1980s in the effort to revive their cultural traditions. Saturday's festivities at the Sicz Club at 145 Washington St. celebrated Malanka, the Ukrainian New Year's Day. In October, the club's officers organized the very first dinner and dance in two decades.

“I really wanted to do this,” Droczak said. “Because we don't do anything Ukraine anymore. It's a really important tradition to pass down.”

She is the happy product of Ukrainian dance lessons and Ukrainian dance camp. She thinks it's important to be involved in Ukrainian traditions instead of simply being able to cite what eastern European ethnic group she descends from.

Prior to the last year, the energy had dissipated in the Sicz Club to organize traditional events, but the group's current leaders pushed to bring them back.

“We're having a new resurgence in the culture,” said Danuta Pinckney, of Aurelius, 44, who picked up her feet for the round of the Kolomyka.

The grandmother who came to the United States in 1970 is enthused because next year her 3-year-old grandson will be old enough to begin dance lessons.

While the community group events had died away, other efforts to teach Ukrainian traditions to younger generations have been sustained. Many local Ukrainian families still celebrate their Easter, Christmas and New Year's holidays on the Julian calendar, which was used in the western world prior to the institution of the current calendar, the Gregorian calendar. A language school is held on the weekends at SS. Peter and Paul Church. Dance lessons result in an annual spring dance concert.

The language lessons have left twin sisters, Irene and Natalia Holak, with a basic working knowledge of the Ukrainian language. And formal Ukrainian dance lessons take away the fear other teenagers feel at formal dance steps.

“It's something you have most people don't,” said Irene, a 19-year-old Auburn native who is now in college.

Her twin sister, Natalia, also now a college student, said Christmas, celebrated this year on Jan. 7, is her favorite Ukrainian tradition because of its focus on family and “not on how much you're getting.”

Later in the evening, one twin waltzed with Droczak, and another twin waltzed with their mother, Alexandra, who was born in a part of Poland that was originally part of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian community in Auburn used to have a New Year's celebration every year; it used to have live bands; it used to have festivals, said Walt Holak, Irene's and Natalia's father.

He was born in Belgium where his parents emigrated to before coming to the United States when he was a child.

The formal gatherings dissipated because most of the first generation of Ukrainians immigrants' grew up and left the area.

But the large-scale events were found worth reviving this year.

“It's the feeling and the music,” Holak said. “I think most of it's the kids.”

Another factor in renewing the community gatherings was the introduction of some new traditional Ukrainian adherents.

One of those new influxes, Maria Dudoeica, 24, moved to the area about a year ago to join her mother's family in Auburn.

Dudoeica grew up in Romania, but follows both Romanian and Ukrainian traditions because her grandparents were Ukrainian immigrants to Romania. Her father has been in the Untied States since 1990, and the rest of her family came in 2000. They resided in Chicago before moving to Auburn.

She finds that the Ukrainian community of Auburn is more interconnected than the Romanian community her family associated most with in Chicago.

“The Ukrainians are more together,” she said.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net