Rosa donetzica — cantata for voice, violin, and viola composed by Oleksii Shmurak based on testimonies from the Kramatorsk community

Rosa donetzica — cantata for voice, violin, and viola composed by Oleksii Shmurak based on testimonies from the Kramatorsk community.

25 June 2026, 18:00
Mykola Krychevskyy Poltava Local History Museum, 2 Konstytutsiyi St.

🚪 The museum is currently closed to visitors — but on 25 June it opens its doors specially for this evening.

Rosa donetzica is the Latin name for the Donetsk rose, a plant endemic to the Donetsk region and the Azov steppe, growing on rocky slopes and open grasslands. It has become an image of rootedness — and resilience.

Dasha Podoltseva conducted a series of workshops with members of the Kramatorsk community in Poltava, gathering personal and collective stories about the home left behind, familiar landscapes, and communities that had to be abandoned. Drawing on these testimonies, Oleksii Shmurak composed the cantata Rosa donetzica for voice, violin, and viola — a work in which documentary precision meets emotional openness. Memories of warmth and nature, care and hard work are brought into dialogue with present-day anxieties and hopes.

Performed by:
Vladyslava Pavlovych (voice)
Kateryna Bereznykova (violin)
Akim Zvarych (viola)

Set design: Dasha Podoltseva and members of the Kramatorsk community in Poltava

The venue has been chosen with purpose: this landmark Poltava museum preserves an interior designed by Vasyl Krychevskyy, featuring plant ornaments that echo the theme of lost landscape. Usually closed to the public, on this evening it becomes a space for encounter — with music, with memory, with community.

"Museum of Forgetting: Poltava" is part of a larger artistic project, realised within the residency "Heritage. Practical Work", which is itself part of the capacity-building and networking programme for local cultural actors "Room for Heritage" — a joint initiative for local cultural practitioners in Ukraine focused on rethinking cultural heritage and strengthening social cohesion. Cantata Rosa donetzica was created as part of Museum of Forgetting: Poltava.

"Museum of Forgetting" is a series of projects by Dasha Podoltseva and Oleksii Shmurak, in which the artists work with local communities on themes of memory and forgetting, loss and adaptation, and coming of age in conditions of war and forced displacement.

Dasha Podoltseva is a visual artist and graphic designer from Kyiv. She is the co-founder of the SERIA__ project, dedicated to mass housing architecture. In addition to creating installations and graphic works, Dasha curates exhibitions, holds workshops, and teaches.

Oleksii Shmurak is a composer, sound artist, and lecturer. As a composer, he works in contemporary classical, electronic, and experimental music formats. He creates music for films and dance performances. As a lecturer, he explores the relationship between music, the body, and political and technological evolution.

The capacity-building and networking programme for local cultural actors, Room for Heritage, is supported by the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden. PFRU's objective is to strengthen Ukraine's resilience in the face of Russian aggression by delivering essential support to local communities in collaboration with the Ukrainian government, civil society, media, and the private sector.