She Danced the World into Her Arms: Iryna Zarutska’s Final Hours, in the Words of Her Best Friend

She laughed like there was no tomorrow, because for Iryna Zarutska, tomorrow was never the point. The point was the music, the moment, the way her bare feet slapped the parquet floor of her tiny Obolon apartment as she spun in circles, arms flung wide, hair whipping like a comet’s tail. I know, because I was there—her best friend, her co-conspirator, the one who held the phone flashlight so she could see the screen while she FaceTimed her mother at 2 a.m. to show off the new dress she’d sewn from two old curtains. That was last night. Twenty-four hours ago. And now the dress is still draped over the chair, the music still echoes in my skull, and Iryna is gone. The world didn’t just stop; it shattered.

Her name was Iryna Zarutska, 29, a dancer with the Kyiv Modern Ballet, a seamstress who could turn thrift-store scraps into couture, a woman who collected stray cats the way others collect regrets. She had a laugh that started in her belly and burst out like champagne—loud, fizzy, impossible to bottle. On Wednesday, November 5, she texted me at dawn: “Olena, come over. I have prosecco and a plan.” The plan, as always, was simple: celebrate nothing in particular, because every day was worth celebrating. She’d just finished a sold-out run of *Swan Lake Reimagined*, where she played the Black Swan with such ferocity that the audience forgot to breathe. Critics called her “a force of nature.” She called herself “a girl who refuses to be small.”

By noon, our apartment—hers, technically, but ours in every way that mattered—was a carnival. Fairy lights strung across the ceiling, a playlist that jumped from Tchaikovsky to Dua Lipa without apology, and a table groaning under plates of varenyky, olives, and the chocolate cake she baked at 3 a.m. because “life is too short for store-bought.” Her little sister, Sofia, 19, was there, filming everything on her cracked iPhone. Iryna’s mother, Hanna, arrived with a bottle of horilka and tears already in her eyes—she always cried when Iryna danced, even in the kitchen. We toasted to everything: to the war that hadn’t taken her yet, to the lover who’d left but taught her how to love harder, to the cats asleep on the windowsill. Iryna raised her glass highest. “To the girls who refuse to be quiet,” she said, and we drank.

She danced like the world belonged to her because, in those hours, it did. She pulled Sofia into a waltz, then me, then her mother, spinning us until we were dizzy and laughing so hard our ribs hurt. She leapt onto the coffee table—barefoot, of course—and performed the *Swan Lake* variation she’d just perfected, her body slicing through the air with the precision of a blade and the abandon of a child. “Watch this,” she said, and executed a perfect fouetté turn, 32 spins without a wobble, her dress flaring like a firework. We cheered. She bowed. Then she collapsed onto the couch, breathless, and said, “I think I could do this forever.”

She spent her final hours surrounded by joy, and that is the cruelest mercy. At 11:47 p.m., the music still thumping, she kissed each of us on both cheeks—Ukrainian style—and said, “I need air.” She stepped onto the balcony, the one overlooking the Dnipro River, where the city lights shimmered like scattered diamonds. Sofia followed with the phone, still recording. Iryna leaned over the railing, arms spread wide, and shouted into the night, “I love you, Kyiv!” Her voice carried over the water, over the rooftops, over the sirens that had become our lullaby. Then she turned, smiling, and said, “Let’s have one more dance.”

The shattering twist came at 11:52 p.m. A structural crack—later blamed on shoddy Soviet-era concrete and the weight of too many lives lived too loudly—split the balcony floor like a fault line. Iryna was mid-pirouette when the railing gave way. Sofia screamed. I lunged. But gravity is merciless. She fell four stories, landing on the pavement below in the dress she’d sewn from curtains, her body crumpled but her face still turned toward the sky, as if she’d simply decided to dance with the stars instead.

The ambulance arrived in seven minutes. The paramedics worked for twenty. At 12:19 a.m., they pronounced her gone. Hanna collapsed. Sofia dropped the phone; the video ends with Iryna’s laugh echoing into silence. The police came. The neighbors gathered. Someone draped a blanket over her, but I pulled it back—I needed to see her one last time, to memorize the curve of her cheek, the freckles across her nose, the way her hair fanned out like a halo on the concrete.

Today, the apartment is quiet. The prosecco is flat. The cake is untouched. The cats pace the balcony, confused. I keep replaying Sofia’s video, frame by frame, searching for the moment the world tilted. There is none. There is only Iryna—laughing, dancing, alive—until she isn’t.

She was supposed to audition for the Paris Opera Ballet next month. She had a date lined up with a violinist who said her eyes reminded him of sunrise over the Carpathians. She was saving for a studio where she could teach little girls to dance like the world was theirs. None of that will happen now. But this will: Her story will be told. Her laugh will be remembered. Her dress—still draped over the chair—will be worn by Sofia at the funeral, because Iryna would have wanted it that way.

She danced as if the world belonged to her, and for one perfect night, it did. Then the world took her back. But it will never take her light. That belongs to us now.

*In loving memory of Iryna Zarutska, 1996–2025. Donations to the Kyiv Animal Rescue Shelter in her name.*