Kyiv’s Closer, one of the most successful nightclubs in Ukraine, will shut down because of the COVID-19 quarantine unless it finds a grant to cover its losses.
“If we are not given a grant, we probably won’t last. It’s easier to close and then reopen in a year and a half or two,” co-owner Sergey Yatsenko told the Ukrayinska Pravda news website in an interview published on Sept. 11.
Since the Ukrainian government imposed a strict lockdown on March 17, Closer has canceled four music festivals and closed its gallery of modern art. Yatsenko and three other co-owners have lost at least Hr 5 million ($177,800) in paying for rent, ads, salaries and artists’ fees, he says.
Closer had to fire most of its staff after almost three months of hard lockdown, according to Yatsenko. And although its landlord made a 50% discount on four months of rent, the club could not pay it because its money was invested in concerts and festivals that later were canceled.
“We are now applying for a grant from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, where the maximum grant amount is (Hr) 1 million, but it’s not even close to meeting our losses,” Yatsenkso says.
In August, Closer started organizing open-air parties during the day, when the government allowed public events in Kyiv with no more than one person per five square-meters of a venue’s space. The club could only hold three nighttime parties over the summer, Yatsenko says.
On Aug. 26, the government banned entertainment venues like nightclubs from working after midnight in all but the so-called “green zones,” where there are the smallest number of COVID-19 cases. The owners of Closer and many other nightclubs protested the decision, since Ukraine’s largest cities were in the yellow zone, the second-best category, at the time.
Starting Sept. 14, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv and other large cities were put into the orange zone of COVID-19 threat, the second most serious category. This means even more restrictions for nightclubs like Closer – now they can only hold public events with no more than one person per 20 square-meters of a venue’s space.
Since it was founded in September 2013, Closer has become the best known Ukrainian electronic music club abroad. It has hosted some of the world’s top DJs and organized popular music festivals, such as Strichka and Brave Factory.
