VOCAL WORKSHOPS

2025

Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 6:30–8:30 PM
Playwrights Downtown, NoHo, NYC

what we learned:

A sold out house gathered and learned traditional Ukrainian songs and dances to a live band. What a fun evening!

Anastasia grew up Ukrainian dancing and extended her repertoire through ethnographic research in community homes in Ukraine. She came to us from her residency at the Kule Folklore Centre at the University of Alberta to teach traditional dances of Ukrainian social gatherings and their accompanying songs called pryspivky. Participants learned to sing common refrains and the dance steps that go with them. Thank you for an energetic and informative experience!

About Anastasia Fyk

Anastasia Fyk is a 4th-generation member of the Ukrainian diaspora, whose family settled on the Prairies of Manitoba, Canada. She is dedicated to reviving traditional dance by reclaiming its essence as social and ritual practice within cultural spaces. As a custodian of Ukrainian folk knowledge encompassing dance, song, crafts, agricultural practices, and culinary traditions, she focuses on fostering community bonds and cross-cultural connections, playing a crucial role in revitalizing endangered village and rural traditions.

Her latest project took shape this summer during a trip to Ukraine, where she conducted field work to gather these traditions, particularity dances, to make connections between those she experienced in childhood and what is practiced today in Ukraine.

During her ongoing residency at the Bohdan Medwidsky Archives at the Kule Centre for Folklore at the University of Alberta, her research focused on dances and dance songs documented on the North American continent during the 20th century as a means of better understanding living memory and contextualizing living tradition in a contemporary context.

She is the founder of Kolektyvs Chornozem and Steppe in Manitoba, as well as a member of Kosa Kolektiv in Ontario.

Sunday, August 10, 2025, 1-3 PM
Playwrights Downtown, NoHo, NYC

We learned gorgeous Ukrainian songs of love with Kyiv-based musician Benya Stewart.

Benya Stewart is an American folk musician from Ohio who has, since 2020, undergone a transition towards living and working in Ukraine. After studying musical theater and then folk singing in American and British styles for many years, a random and fortuitous connection with an Belarusian folklorist led him down the road towards a lasting fascination with traditional Ukrainian singing. For the last two years, he has lived in Kyiv full-time as an English teacher, where he has had the incredible fortune to study singing weekly with Yevhen Yefremov and Ilya Fetysov. This workshop covered a range of songs learned directly from Mr. Yefremov and Mr. Fetysov, both of whom are widely known as some of the most important folklorists in Ukraine.

ABOUT BENYA STEWART

Benya Stewart was born in southeastern Ohio to two university professors, who had themselves shelved hopes of musical careers to raise a young family. He was blessed with opportunities to study music and singing all his life, being drawn first into the world of musical theater and marching band drum lines. As a young adult, he even had the good fortune of being able to study the traditional rhythm and dance of west Africa, which mixed in parallel and contrast with an ever-growing interest in the fiddle tunes and ballad-singing of his home region.

Benya’s life path changed forever when he was first exposed to Slavic singing. In 2019, he encountered a Belarusian folk musician and archivist named Siarhei Douhoushau, who has done more than almost anyone for the preservation of Belarusian folk music. They, with Brett Hill, another American folk singer and a Ukrainian folk band, formed the international collaboration Slavalachia, which produced one self-titled record and performed at Zakhid Fest in Ukraine in September 2021.

From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Benya and Brett began an aggressive grassroots fundraising campaign in Ohio and beyond based on musical performances and cultural advocacy. They ultimately raised over $100K for Ukrainian humanitarian causes, most of which became tourniquets and other critical medicine. After a delivery trip to the frontlines in October 2022, Benya became enthralled with the feeling of living in Ukraine, and especially with the opportunity to document and participate in the cultural renaissance which is now thoroughly underway. Presently he lives in Kyiv as an English teacher, where he has the incredible fortune to study traditional singing weekly with Yevhen Yefremov and Ilya Fetysov.