This webinar is the third in a six-part series, The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, designed to support K-14 educators in bringing the arts of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia into their classrooms. During this session, we will learn about the Russian ballet as a powerful cultural force shaped by political, religious, and aesthetic pressures from the 19th to the 20th century. We will examine how ballet was viewed by critics, dancers, and administrators—as both an “impossible” art form and a near-religious practice of survival and expression.

This webinar is the fifth in a six-part series, The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, designed to help K-14 educators integrate Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European arts into their classrooms. It explores the influential and enduring role of theater in this region, where theatergoing remains an ordinary, affordable, and deeply valued cultural practice.

This webinar is the third in a six-part series, The Arts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, designed to support educators in bringing the arts of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia into their classrooms. This session focuses on practical strategies for incorporating the region’s rich musical traditions into K–12 teaching. Participants will explore both traditional and popular musical forms and genres, using sound as a lens to illuminate broader cultural, historical, and social themes.

In 1945, Shikl Gershberg sang a song about the massacre by German and Romanian troops that killed 437 people in his small Ukrainian town in July 1941. It ended with the haunting line: "Our town of Zhabokrych became a cemetery." For many years, the song was the only memorial to Gershberg's family and community. A physical monument remained unrealized due to restrictions by Soviet authorities.