Fedir Danylak

Organized by Fedir Danylak, with the help of parental committee, third trip in 2008 was a commemorative 40th anniversary tour celebrating 40 years since the creation of Barvinok Ukrainian School of Dance. This tour featured performances in Lviv, Pukiv, Rohatyn, Ternopil and Kiev. Its most memorable presentation, choreographed and produced by Fedir was the Holodomor dance suite. Created as a commemorate the victims of the 1932-1933 genocide of Ukrainian people, it was performed at the annual Ukrainian World Congress in front of the then president Viktor Yuschenko and prime-minister Yulia Tymoshenko of Ukraine. It gained further acclaim when it was performed at an event commemorating the Holodomor victims on November 29, 2008 in Toronto Canada.

The results were earned with hard work of both Fedir Danylak and the dancer's parents. The first trip to Ukraine in 2000 culminated with a 1st place at the International Ukrainian Dance Competition in Yalta. Participation in numerous festivals and formal events helped spread the popularity of the school and its attendance group from over a hundred students, when Fedir began, to over four hundred dancers in 2009-2010 year. Still there was more to be done, and Fedir enthusiastically followed his chosen path. In 2004, the second trip was again successful, with performances in Kharkiv at the city's 350th anniversary and in front of the thousands of spectators for the Ukraine's Independence Day in 2004.

The year 1997 began a new path for Fedir Danylak. He was introduced to Barvinok Ukrainian Dance Ensemble's executive committee by his friend Myroslava Cummings. During the trial period at the dance school, Fedir impressed the committee with his vast knowledge of Ukrainian Dance and his ability to impart his knowledge onto his students, from little five-year-olds to dancers in their early twenties. The decades of experience teaching Ukrainian Dance in Ukraine served as a starting point in his career as an Artistic Director of Barvinok.

In late 1996, Fedir Danylak and his family immigrated to Canada. The city of Toronto, with its vibrant and sizable Ukrainian community offered Fedir plenty of opportunity to continue in his chosen career as a teacher and choreographer. In the first year, Fedir taught Ukrainian dance at a number of Ukrainian dance school in Toronto area. Vesnianka and Academy of Ukrainian Dance presented him with the experience of teaching dance at the Ukrainian community abroad.

Fedir Ivanovych Danylak (Ukrainian: Федір Іванович Даниляк ) (born 1955) is an innovative dancer, balletmaster, choreographer and artistic director of the Barvinok Ukrainian School of Dance in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Fedir Danylak was born on September 2, 1955 in Pukiv, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (today in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast of western Ukraine). Growing up in a large family during the Communist rule of Ukraine was not easy, yet from an early age Fedir always showed that he had a talent for entertaining. He loved to perform in front of crowds in his native village and after graduating from the high school, he was accepted into the Snyatyn College of Culture where he studied the art of Ukrainian dance and received training in ballet, choreography and dance. Upon his graduation, he was drafted into the Soviet Army, serving in the Long Range Missile Defence group in Sochi.