Uniting together, honoring cultural heritage are the key elements of the mission for the SLAVA School. Our Ukrainian Dance Studio was founded three years ago, in August 2022. Our School of Ukrainian Dance was established as a dance branch Music Academy. It was quite a brave move as for the past 15 years the Greater Washington DC area have not had a consistent Ukrainian folk dance program tha
t would serve families who wanted their children to connect with their culture and heritage through Ukrainian dance. In addition, many families arrived to the area who fled Ukraine escaping from the full scale Russian invasion. They needed for their children a safe and welcoming artistic environment that would remind them of their home. We got onboard talented and masterful teachers and very dedicated and passionate for dance parents with children excited to learn. Since then our School of Ukrainian Dance filled the niche of a local Ukrainian Folk Dance youth performing group. We were invited to perform at the Ukraine House, Czech Embassy, Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Baltimore and Washington Ukrainian Festivals, Ukrainian community events, International events at VA, DC and MD schools. We are so proud of those accomplishments! At the start of the dance program we did not come up with a special name unique for this dance entity as we wanted to see what direction it would take. After these three years we finally got one! At our start of the fourth year and celebration of thirty fourth Independence Day of Ukraine we want to introduce SLAVA as the name of our School of Ukrainian Music and Dance! SLAVA UKRAINI is the most popular and well known phrase in USA and the world associated with Ukraine. It is a symbol of Ukrainian resilience and a call for Unity
SLAVA in Ukrainian means FAME, HONOR and GLORY. Uniting together, honoring our cultural heritage, making it accessible and popular for the audience through Ukrainian music and dance are the key elements of our mission for the SLAVA School.