Name: Anastasia Topolskaia
Age: 29
Education: Donetsk National University of Economics and Trade
Profession: DJ
Did you know? The Closer art club in Kyiv’s Podil district holds the Strichka Festival that originally was a party to celebrate Topolskaia’s birthday.
Anastasia Topolskaia, 29, who performs under the stage name DJ Nastia, is one of the high-paid in her profession from Ukraine. She’s rather famous among electronic music lovers abroad than at her homeland: Topolskaia has about 200 performances a year in clubs in Europe, South and North America and Asia and Australia.
Unlike many DJs of her level, Topolskaia says that she likes playing different music instead of sticking to the single format.
Topolskaia was born in a small town in Luhansk Oblast called Fashchivka, 764 kilometers southest of Kyiv. She and two her older sisters were raised in a family with “less than average income,” She didn’t dream to be a DJ in a childhood. She wanted to be a dancer. Topolskaia recalls that she was going to single club Fashchivka since she was 10-11 years old.
After finishing school, she moved to Donetsk, where her sisters have already settled, and started working as a go-go dancer in the club. Soon, however, she decided to switch to DJ-ing, because she realized that dancers have short career.
Topolskaia asked her boyfriend, a local DJ who was then one of the most prominent in the city, to show her how to mix tracks. In 2005 Topolskaia gave her first gig in Ivano-Frankivsk city in western Ukraine under the stage name DJ Natia Beauty. And that’s how her career started.
In 2006 Topolskaia became a resident of Kazantip, one of Ukraine’s most prominent festival of electronic music that was held in Crimea from 1992 to 2013. Topolskaia soon married DJ Anatoly Topolsky, who performs under the stage name DJ Tapolsky. The couple broke up several years ago, and now Topolskaia lives with a lawmaker and former journalist Sergii Leshchenko.
In 2009 Topolskaia got several offers from nightclubs abroad, after a video of her mixing her tracks and dancing got more than 100,000 views on YouTube. She said that she is constantly developing her music style.
Topolskaia loves playing in Kyiv, adding that she has several favorite clubs in the capital and in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, where the audience demands more interesting and complicated music.
“People come to these parties not just to hang out, have fun and forget everything. They need concept and the idea. It’s interesting because it’s not for mass audience. It’s underground,” Topolskaia said.
To support unknown but talented Ukrainian musicians, Topolskaia created her own label “Propaganda.” Among Ukrainian clubs, Topolskaia points out Closer and Scheme in Kyiv and Port in Odesa.
