Just a few months ago, Anastasia Topolskaia, one of the highest paid DJs in Ukraine, was more famous abroad than in her homeland.
The 29-year-old Topolskaia plays her electronic music sets abroad around 200 times a year, performing less often in Kyiv. However, Topolskaia did hit the headlines this year – not as a musician, but because she started dating Ukrainian lawmaker and former top journalist Sergii Leshchenko.
In August, Topolskaia and Leshchenko found themselves amid a scandal after it was revealed they had bought an apartment in Kyiv for Hr 7.5 million ($281,000).
Leshchenko denied any accusations of impropriety, saying half of the money came from a 10-year loan from Olena Prytula, the chief editor and main shareholder in the Ukrainska Pravda news website.
Leshchenko said he also used his own savings, including his income as a Ukrainska Pravda shareholder. The rest of the money for the apartment came from his girlfriend, Topolskaia. The DJ said to Ukrainian media that she makes several thousand euros per show.
Topolskaia says that she doesn’t pay attention to what her detractors say.
“I know how to defend myself,” she says, adding that she and Leshchenko decided to make their relationship public to quash possible rumors.
Small town to big city
Topolskaia was born in Fashchivka, a town of nearly 3,000 people in Luhansk Oblast, which is now occupied by Russian-separatist forces. Her father was the only photographer in town. Her mother stayed at home to look after Topolskaia, who suffered from asthma in childhood, and her two older sisters.
After finishing school, Topolskaia moved to Donetsk, following her sisters, and enrolled in the Donetsk National University of Economics and Trade, working part time as a go-go dancer in a nightclub.
“I just was going to the club and everybody was paying attention to me, because I was one of the brightest (people) there,” she said, adding that she always adored dancing and had been going to clubs since she was 10-11 years old with her sisters.
Later, she decided to switch to being a DJ, as she realized that dancers have short careers. She asked her boyfriend, who was a popular local DJ, to show her how to mix tracks.
Topolskaia performed for the first time on Sept. 30, 2005 (she still remembers the date precisely) in a club in Ivano-Fankivsk, a city in the west of Ukraine, under the stage name DJ Beauty.
In 2006, Topolskaia became a resident performer at Kazantip, Ukraine’s most popular electronic music festival, which was held in Crimea from 1992 to 2013. A year after that, she married the famous DJ Anatoly Topolsky, who performs under the stage name DJ Tapolsky. The couple separated several years ago, but started the divorce process only this year, after Topolskaia started dating Leshchenko. They have a eight-year-old daughter, Ulyana, who lives with her.
International fame
Topolskaia said that she received her first invitation to play in a German club after a video of her set went viral on the web, attracting more than 100,000 views in 2009. She said that she was developing fast in electronic music, changed her style and name to DJ Nastya, and soon “proved that she is musician, not a showmaker.”
Topolskaia also became a resident at the ARMA17 club in Moscow, one of the world’s top venues for electronic music.
Topolskaia plays various styles of electronic music such as house, minimal, techno and others.
“When I started playing, we (DJs) mixed everything and nobody cared, it was normal,” she said. “Now, at the level where I am, there are more DJs who play in one format.”
She said that DJs usually specialize in one particular style because that makes it easier to follow the trends, and to develop one’s own music within that style.
“But I would get bored if I only played in one style,” Topolskaia said.
Underground clubs
Topolskaia said that she usually performs in mainstream clubs, as they have enough money to afford the highest-paid musicians. However, she says she loves playing in alternative clubs, where people are more interested in the quality of music. Her favorite city to play is still Kyiv.
Topolskaia said that there are several underground clubs in Ukraine, such as Scheme and Closer in Kyiv, and Port in Odesa, which play high-quality music and have knowledgeable audiences, which has engendered a progressive club culture among the country’s youngsters.
“The most important thing in the development of a unique Ukrainian club culture is that promoters (of different clubs) are reaching agreements with each other and work as a team. You wouldn’t find that almost anywhere else in the world.”
Frantic schedule
Topolskaia said that her busy schedule is an inseparable part of her life: She wakes up at about 7 a.m. every day, spends her weekends on working trips and vacations only one month a year. When Topolskaia is not in town, her boyfriend Leshchenko or her mother look after Ulyana.
Despite her tight schedule, Topolskaia said she’s not a person who carefully plans the future. She said that she wanted to work as a DJ until she’s 35, but she has no other particular plans in mind, except, perhaps, getting a degree in psychology.
“You can make a plan and follow it until you reach your goal,” she said. “But I don’t like doing that. I prefer following my feelings, intuition and to let the flow of life carry me.”
DJ Nastia’s next gig in Kyiv will be at the Closer club (31 Nyzhnioyurkivska St.) on Nov. 19. n
