the festival that summer. The 3-part Hopak was later reprised in September back in Ukraine as part of the opera, Zaporozhets za Dunayem. The format of the 3-part Hopak was subsequently adopted by many professional folk dance ensembles who have choreographed their own variants of Hopak through the years. In 1990, twenty members of the State Folk Dance Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR, split off and created the Hopak! Ukrainian Dance Company, Ukraine's first independent professional dance company, under the direction of Sergei Makarov. Dance steps The modern-day Hopak is a choreographed dance made to appear full of improvisation. Much of the seemingly improvised parts involve solo dancers, usually male, performing visually and technically amazing acrobatic feats. These include jumps and spins and are usually the highlight of the performance. The rest of the dance includes many movements performed in unison, especially by the female dancers, while male dancers typically perform squat sequences. Because of the speed and energy required to perform a successful Hopak, this dance is usually performed at the end of a program. As in many Ukrainian dances, the dancers, especially the women, do not stop moving until the end of the dance. Hopak music Music for the Hopak is not standardized by tempo or melody, although time predominates most arrangements. The dance is supposed to evoke a sense of improvisation, so the pace of the music changes from segment to segment, allowing dancers to distinguish themselves. The melodies of the songs () and Od Kyeva do Luben () can be found in many Hopak arrangements. Hopaks usually end on a fast and furious pace, with some incorporating boisterous Ukrainian marches, such as Zasvystaly kozachen'ky (). A number of composers have composed a Hopak as part of an opera or ballet: Operas Modest Mussorgsky, in The Fair at Sorochyntsi Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, in Mazepa Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, in May Night Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, in Zaporozhets za Dunayem Ballets Aram Khachaturian, in Gayane Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, in Taras Bulba Cesare Pugni, in The Little Humpbacked Horse Anatoliy Sviechnikov, in Marusia Bohuslavka In other fields Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once famously forced his eventual successor Nikita Khrushchev (who had been the Communist Party chief in Ukraine) to dance the Hopak. The Hopak was performed as a part of the choreographic suite Friendship of Peoples by dancers in Ukrainian folk costumes during the opening ceremony of the 1980 Summer Olympics. This event took