Anthropomorphic symbolic images in the Ukrainian folk dancing culture

The purpose of the article is to define the semantics of the actional forms and compositional structures of circle dances and dancing pantomimes featuring the anthropomorphic images which are characteristic of the traditional annual calendar, rites of passage, and family routine ceremonialism laying the original background of the Ukrainian artwork. The methodology rests on the grounds of the complex approach and the application of analytical (art-critical, philosophical, cultural approaches to the field of study), historical (the Ukrainian choreography genesis study), cultural (examining functions performed by folk dancing culture in the spiritual life of the Ukrainian ethnos) and semiotic (analysis of dance signs structure and dancing symbols semantics) methods. Scientific novelty: the author has conducted a complex art critical research of the anthropomorphic images that became symbols in the Ukrainian national tradition with the determination of their in-depth semantic meaning and functional role in the national dancing art.  Conclusions. Within the imagery richness of the Ukrainian folk choreography, there are a lot of sign-symbols, character-symbols represented in dance space patterns, and figures reproduced by performers’ plastic movements. The study of the structural-verbal and symbolic features of these choreographic patterns gives reasons to claim about their undoubted archaic roots in a play mode reflecting the unique variant of the transitional ritual (passage rite) related to an individual’s life, his status, and the external world.