The Kyiv City Ballet danced to a full theater in Paris for the company’s last show of its French tour. The tour has left the dancers without a place to go after the war started in Ukraine. In other times, performing at the Théatre du Chatelet would be a dream come true for the dancers. But with the ongoing war in their country, the dancers feel only a deep sadness.

“We are both physically and emotionally exhausted.” Ekaterina Kozlova said. She is the company’s assistant director. “Everyone in the ballet is worried about their families, loved ones, friends, colleagues at home. It’s been very difficult.”

The Théatre du Chatelet, in the center of Paris, offered them the stage on Tuesday for the group’s final show of a French tour. The dance director of the Paris Opera and some members of her company joined the Ukrainians for a class before performing several ballet classics together. They danced parts of Russian composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and The Nutcrackery.

For many of the dancers, the chance to train and dance was a way to think about “something other than the conflict in Ukraine,” Kozlova said. One of the dancers will be going to the Ukrainian border in the coming days to pick up her young daughter who was taken out of the country. Only some members of the company were traveling around France. Many of the ballet’s best dancers stayed behind, waiting to join their friends after they reached Paris.

“Most of our artists are detained in Paris.” Director Ivan Kozlova told the Paris crowd. The city of Paris and the ballet community have helped find temporary housing for the Ukrainian dancers who say they hope to continue dancing in France and elsewhere. The Chatelet theater offered the whole group a residency. But for now, Tuesday’s last-minute performance was their last. All sales from their performances will go to nongovernmental organizations collecting and sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine and neighboring countries.

The Chinese Shenzhou-13 spacecraft and its crew of three taikonauts ended their six-month mission with a return to Earth on Saturday, 16 April after completing the first long-duration stay aboard the Chinese Space Station.

The astronauts performed two spacewalks, conducted more than 20 different science experiments and delivered two live educational lectures in space, the report said. Leading China’s most recent human spaceflight was Zhai Zhigang, a major general in the People’s Liberation Army and an experienced taikonaut, having joined the Chinese human spaceflight program in 1998 and becoming the first Chinese person to conduct a spacewalk during the Shenzhou-7 mission in September 2008.

Female taikonaut and People’s Liberation Army Air Force colonel Wang Yaping also has experience within the Shenzhou program. She became the second Chinese woman to fly to space when she flew on Shenzhou-10 in June 2013, and now holds the distinction of being the first Chinese woman ever to conduct a spacewalk.

Ye Guangfu, a PLAAF pilot, was the only Shenzhou-13 crew member who was a first-time flier. He was selected to join the taikonaut corps (兵团) alongside Wang Yaping in 2010, serving as a backup crew member for the Shenzhou-12 mission that launched in June 2021.

The mission marks that China has completed the verification (验证) of key technologies of its space station, and also sets a record for Chinese astronauts’ duration in orbit, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Calling the success of the astronauts a major win for China’s space exploration program, Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar, pointed out that as a major developing country, China’s stride in space science is an inspiration to the developing country.

By building its own space station, China will expand its scientific reach, Adhere said, adding that China’s space exploration program is also open to other developing countries. For example, Beijing is working with African countries across a range of space exploration themes, the scholar noted. “Such exchange programs have significantly boosted capacity for space development programs on the continent.”

Saying the mission is “definitely a success,” Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Australian National University, told Xinhua that it is “important to move forward with a long-term space station and full operation.”

This mission has shown that China’s astronauts “are capable of long-term space flight, which makes Earth’s future goals and plans for the Moon and beyond exciting,” Tucker said.