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Dressed in the colours of Ukraine, a ballet dancer moves delicately across the stage of Rotterdam’s medieval St Lawrence Church.

Vladyslav Bondar is performing with the United Ukrainian Ballet at a Salvation Army Christmas party – a setting far removed from the war in his homeland.

It is not where he thought he’d be 10 months after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

“I wanted to fight for Ukraine,” Vladyslav says after the performance, knowing it could have meant the end of his career as a professional dancer.

But instead of taking up arms, he took again to the stage.

Vladyslav found his way to The Hague, joining more than 70 other Ukrainians who now make up the United Ukrainian Ballet – a dance company formed directly in response to the outbreak of war.

Initially the company was composed only of female dancers. Men had to remain in Ukraine in case they were called up for military duty. But a few months into the war, some professional male dancers were given special dispensation to leave the country.

“I still think about how I could do more for my country. I think about this every day, but while my friends and family fight for Ukraine, for now my contribution is to dance for Ukraine,” he explained.

Fellow dancer Oleksii Kniazkov agrees: “Every single Ukrainian has his own battlefield. And the stage is ours.”

Before the war, he was the principal dancer for Kharkiv’s National Opera and Ballet Theatre. He spent months sheltering from bombs in his hometown until there was an opportunity to leave.

“It’s important everyone does what they can do the best. We are dancers. So right now we dance for Ukraine. And we dance for freedom,” Oleksii says.

They now represent Ukraine’s cultural frontline, aiming to protect, support and spread a culture they say is threatened by this conflict. Even Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has recognised the importance of their mission – and his wife, Olena, was a driving force behind it.

“If we don’t have the opportunity to dance, I think it’s possible that Ukrainian culture could completely die out,” says 26-year-old ballerina Svetlana Onipko.

Wearing a donated black and pink tracksuit, her hair tied neatly back into a bun, she describes hiding for two weeks with her family in a bomb shelter before deciding to leave Ukraine alone in the hope of finding work.

She spent four months travelling around Europe, before learning of the United Ukrainian Ballet.

“The war made me not want to dance. I was depressed and had lost inspiration for life,” Svetlana says, “but here I started to feel myself again, and I found a new purpose.”

The troupe have been performing all over the world, taking classics such as Giselle and Swan Lake on tour and raising money that will in part go back to Ukrainian people and the war effort.

Swan Lake is by the Russian composer, Tchaikovsky, and some of the dancers refuse to perform it given the situation with Russia.

“I think it’s important to block Russian dance in the world,” says Vladyslav. “I think we need a quarantine from it now. Maybe not forever, but for me, personally, at this moment it’s not right.”

United Ukrainian Ballet’s manager Taras Onishchenko understands. He says he would never insist.

“If some people don’t want to dance it, it’s completely their choice. But we also have people who really want to do it.”

Onischenko, wearing sunglasses indoors and leaning against the barre, is the driving force behind this foundation.

“Today Tchaikovsky is a great composer that belongs to the world – not to Putin or Putin’s regime,” he says.

The broadcast of Swan Lake in the former Soviet Union was often a sign of political upheaval – state TV interrupted programming by airing the ballet on a loop after the deaths of multiple leaders as well as during a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

For many of these dancers, they’re now reinventing its meaning and taking it to the stage in protest.

Oleksii was one of those who performed it on a recent tour of Australia and Singapore.

“For me, Swan Lake turns from a sentimental story about the struggle between good and evil, to a story about evil, authoritarian leader Rothbart, who wants to control everything around him in his interests,” he explains.

“He cheats, he lies to get more power, but in the end, he loses everything and dies. Love wins. Truth wins.”

For Oleksii, and the others performing it, this new meaning is empowering.

And at the end of each performance the dancers do not just take their bows, they stand together and sing the Ukrainian national anthem, most draped in Ukrainian flags.

One ballerina holds a sign that reads “make dance, not war”.

In their role as defenders and protectors of Ukrainian culture, they no longer just perform. Theirs is now a dance of defiance.

Whenever Jacob Lusk steps on stage with his band Gabriels, you will always find him in a tuxedo and bow tie.

Whether he’s serenading Glastonbury on a balmy Saturday afternoon, or supporting Harry Styles on his US tour, the outfit remains the same. And for one very particular reason.

“If you remember, there was a time when servers wore black tie,” says the singer. “So when I put the tux on, it’s almost in a way of servitude.

“I’m here because you bought a ticket and I’m here because you spent your money, so this is my way of giving you the utmost respect and honour.

“It puts the show at a different level.”

Formalwear or not, the band are captivating to watch. Lusk’s voice is unreal, simmering just below combustion point until he leans back and unleashes all his regrets and passions and furies in an otherworldly falsetto.

The band, completed by violinist Ari Balouzian and keyboard player Ryan Hope, back him up with a sound that mixes 60s soul, ghetto funk, the black Baptist church tradition and the spectral trip-hop of Massive Attack and Wu Tang Clan.

Their music has impressed enough people to earn them fifth place on BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2023 – with critics, DJs and fellow musicians tipping them for crossover success in the next 12 months.

“I didn’t know very much about it, to be honest,” says Lusk of the poll, which has previously predicted stardom for the likes of Adele, Stormzy and Michael Kiwanuka.

“But I looked it up and it’s good company to be in. The only problem is, I like to win!”

Lusk is one of those singers who, when you meet him, already seems destined for stardom.

Forthright and funny, he punctuates his speech with scurrilous asides, snatches of song, and an open brag about his expertise as a baker.

“If I make you my cornbread, you’ll marry me,” he declares with a resounding guffaw.

But his path to success has been a long one, littered with failed record deals, untrustworthy managers and an experience on American Idol that he’s described as “harrowing” and “treacherous”.

Now 35, he was born and raised in Compton, Los Angeles. It’s a city-suburb that’s become associated with gangster rap, thanks to NWA, but Lusk says the reality is very different.

“There are no projects in Compton, it’s lower middle class. The people who live in your neighbourhood might be the trashman or they work at the grocery store. So it’s not as lurid as NWA made it seem.

“Those options were there for you, but the hood protects certain people – and I feel like I was one of those people. I was very studious, I was a student body president, I was the captain of the speech debate team.”

In fact, the young singer originally intended to become a doctor, until he saw a Craigslist advert looking for backing singers.

Upon replying, Lusk discovered it had been posted by G-Funk icon Nate Dogg, whose work on songs like Warren G’s Regulate and Dr Dre’s The Next Episode saw him nicknamed “the king of hooks”.

Lusk joined the star’s gospel choir, InNate Praise, and the pair bonded one night after he missed his train home.

“He was like, ‘Well, you can just stay the night here and catch the train in the morning’. That night, he told me all his war stories about Tupac and Biggie, and we started writing together after that”.

But their collaboration came to an untimely end after Nate suffered a series of strokes and died in 2011 at the age of 41.

“It wasn’t until he died that I found out that he’d been having conversations about getting me a deal,” Lusk recalls, wistfully.

Death has been a constant and unwelcome presence in the musician’s life. When he was 12, his dad “got sick and dropped dead”. His grandfather was killed in a jeep accident. An uncle took his own life. His god-sister died while he was recording Gabriels’ first album.

“It just makes you realise how how short and precious life is,” he says. “You don’t blame it on people, it just is what it is.”

Unsurprisingly, grief and loss are recurring themes in his lyrics, but Lusk is a philosopher and an optimist.

If You Only Knew, one of Gabriels’ most heartrending songs, is written from the point of view of the deceased, offering comfort to the people they’ve left behind.

“When you feel the sun shining / That’s my love shining down on you / You ain’t alone”.

The band was formed almost by accident in 2016, when Balouzian and Hope, who sideline as filmmakers, hired Lusk’s church choir to sing on a commercial.

Although Lusk has sung background for Diana Ross and Gladys Knight in a professional capacity, this singing group was comprised of amateurs.

“It was the plumber and, the woman who’s 55 and stays at home on social security. There was this one guy, he was tone deaf, poor thing, but he had the sweetest heart. And when he sang, he sang from his heart and it makes the difference.”

Balouzian and Hope, who had never seen Lusk on American Idol (he came fifth in the 2011 series), were immediately impressed by his skills – orchestrating harmonies on the fly, and directing the singers with an equal of empathy and discipline.

They asked him to come to Hope’s studio in Palm Springs to make more music. When he declined, they camped outside his church with a remote recording studio. Pretty soon, they were inseparable, despite having “literally no shared reference points”.

“We are three extremely different people from the way we look, the way we talk, the way we act, to the way we were raised – but we’ve become extremely close friends.

“And that’s because there are more things that make us all alike than that make us different.”

The trio took things slowly at first, holding down day jobs and meeting up once a month as they honed their sound.

They didn’t release anything until 2018, when a piece of music they’d composed for a Prada commercial was picked up by seminal European label R&S Records.

But it was 2020’s Love And Hate In A Different Time that really put them on the map. Written as a response to Covid lockdowns and the death of George Floyd, the song was a cry of pain that resonated around the world.

“It was almost apocalyptic,” Lusk says of his state of mind at the time.

“We felt like the world was ending. I don’t want to get political, but we all watched as like this dude got killed by a police officer, literally on camera.

“And everyone, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, had that same feeling of like, ‘What the hell is going on?'”

Music, he concedes, can’t offer any answers. But what it can do is provide a shared place to experience grief.

“To know that you’re not alone is the key,” says Lusk. “It’s like, ‘Oh, they feel the same way that I feel. Thank God.'”

The song was championed by Elton John (a rite of passage for almost every new artist) and saw Gabriels booked to play with Harry Styles when he toured the US last year.

“To have these people open these doors for us is incredible,” marvels Lusk. “Elton John? He’s a legend. Harry Styles? I have not one bad word. Best experience of my life.”

As Gabriels’ star ascends, Lusk wants to pay those favours forward.

“Although the BBC Sound poll is technically a competition, I just discovered [fellow nominees] Flo, and I can’t stop singing, ‘I’m a put your stuff in a cardboard box’.

“We’re all unique. There’s space for all of us.

“So I may want to win. But I want us all to win.”

With its catchy chorus and powerful lyrics, the pop song Better Days hit the airwaves in Colombia in the summer of 2010. But the song contained a hidden message that its creators could only reveal once the top-secret files about its true meaning were declassified.

“Malaria was an issue. Ticks were everywhere. When you sat down or tried to sleep ants would be crawling on you,” says retired Maj Gen Luis Herlindo Mendieta Ovalle, who was held captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) from 1998-2010.

“Then there was the fungus,” he says, “because of the humidity, fungus would grow on your intimate parts, and we had no medications to treat it.”

During Colombia’s 50-year bitter armed conflict, atrocities were committed on both sides. In the early 2000s kidnapping had become a key strategy for the Farc to fund itself. Colombia’s transitional justice tribunal estimates that 21,396 people were kidnapped during the conflict.

Army soldiers and police officers were often the main targets. Chained in secret camps in the Colombian jungle, the conditions endured by the hostages were enough to make any person lose hope.

Rescue missions were dangerous due to the mountainous terrain and, like Gen Mendieta, some security forces hostages had spent several years in captivity.

At the time, Col José Espejo, then a Colombian army communications officer, knew how important morale among troops was to the success of a rescue operation.

“We desperately wanted to give the military hostages something that they could hold on to, a message of hope that would maintain their spirit and strength, so they could consider the possibility of escape if the opportunity presented itself,” he says.

In order to deliver this message he decided to throw out the rule book and instead turned to Juan Carlos Ortíz, the CEO of an advertising agency. Mr Ortíz’s government-funded anti-drug campaign had won an award for innovation, but had also attracted the attention of the Farc, for whom the cocaine trade was a lucrative source of income.

Mr Ortíz received death threats from the guerrillas and had to flee to the US with his family to begin a new life there. But he and his team decided to take up the challenge to come up with a way of getting a message of hope to the hostages.

A meeting with army representatives sparked an idea.

“They told us that Colombian soldiers in their basic training are trained [in] Morse code,” he says. “We thought, ‘Right, how can we communicate with them via Morse code?’ It was a true light bulb moment.”

With hostages kept deep in the jungle and communication from the outside world near impossible, creative director, Alfonso Díaz, says they realised they would only be able to get through to them via radio.

“During this era, a journalist called Herbin Hoyos – who did a lot for all of the hostages – created a programme called ‘Voices of the Kidnapped’,” he says, “to help reduce their feelings of isolation by broadcasting messages from their loved ones to those in captivity.”

Mr Hoyos, who had also been a former hostage of the Farc, died of coronavirus in 2021. His programme was a lifeline for many during the years it aired and seemed like the perfect place to first broadcast the message.

Mr Díaz says they thought about including the Morse code in a joke, with the beeps apparently covering up swear words, but this didn’t seem appropriate. Then he had the idea for a song.

Audio producer Carlos Portela says they initially thought of using “a cheerful vallenato or a salsa”, but realised this might cause “the listener’s mind to wander”. So they decided instead on a sentimental song with emotional lyrics to help the hostages make the link between the song and the Morse code hidden within it.

“The lyrics to Better Days speak of the heart, of the resilience and the strength that the hostages must possess to be able to move forward and not to despair when they are alone,” says Mr Díaz, who co-wrote the lyrics with Mr Portela.

They enlisted the help of rock singer Angelo, who had come up through the ranks of Colombia’s version of the X Factor, and singer and actor Natalia Gutiérrez.

Mr Portela, along with composer, producer and sound engineer Amaury Hernández, carried out a lot of research into Morse Code, including how many words per minute a person could decipher. They decided to use a synthesizer in the track to help camouflage the message.

The code was inserted in three different places within the song and the team decided to transmit one simple message: “19 people rescued. You’re next. Don’t lose hope.”

After eight months, the song was ready for its first broadcast in 2010 on Mr Hoyos’s programme and by-passed the commercial stations to play on more than 130 rural stations across Colombia.

“There are many millions of people who have listened to the song Better Days, but that wasn’t our goal,” says Mr Ortíz. “Success for us was to be found in small, specific numbers. It was in the chosen few hearing it and understanding it.”

Gen Mendieta, who had been rescued in the same year, helped the mission by appearing on live TV and asking the rebels to give the hostages access to the radio for company.

“Someone once said, ‘Whoever has a book is not alone,” he says, “and in our case, it was, ‘Whoever has a radio is not alone.'”

But with airplay also came the risk that the Farc would decode the hidden message.

“When you consider that the hostages were faced with the possibility of dying in the jungle, far from their families, to take a risk in the area of communications was both valid and important,” says Col Espejo.

It was not until hostages started to be released over the next few months and years that intelligence about the success of the song came back. Col Espejo says one rescued hostage spoke of hearing the Morse code message in his psychological evaluation and had passed on its meaning to his fellow captives.

“When the news arrived that the song had worked, I walked down the street with such a feeling of joy that I couldn’t stop myself from smiling,” says Mr Portela.

Many of the production team kept their involvement in the song quiet until very recently.

“Can you believe that my family didn’t know?” says Ms Gutiérrez. ” I never said anything to them for years about it because of the confidentiality clause.”

The song also won its creative team a prestigious design award: The Golden Lion from Cannes.

The political landscape has significantly changed in Colombia since Better Days received its first radio play. In 2016, the Farc signed a landmark peace deal with the Colombian government and thousands of former rebels have demilitarised. But the country still grapples with violence from other armed groups and widespread drug trafficking.

Colombia still has a long way to go to face many of the atrocities committed during the armed conflict, including those by the army.

So the song for Col Espejo, now retired, is bittersweet.

Better Days, though rooted in the past, remains an anthem for the future too.