If you live in or near Washington, D.C., then you get to enjoy the first event on this month's calendar of Russian art, music and dance in America. Tonight at 6 p.m., the Kennedy Center will host "TransAtlantic Duo". Alexander Paperny plays the balalaika and Vladimir Fridman contributes guitar and vocals to a program that promises Bach, klezmer, jazz and traditional Russian music.

If you attend Vassar College or know someone who does, you have a crack at the second event: An open dress rehearsal at its Powerhouse Theater on May 2 at 8 p.m. of the Russian futurist opera, Victory Over the Sun. St. Petersburg composer Gregory Firtich will perform, along with Vassar students singers and musicians.

The Tribeca Film Festival is on in New York City, and there are three Russian movies on the bill later this week. On Friday, May 4 at 4:30 there will be a showing of Playing the Victim, which is being billed as "black-humored Russian Hamlet by one of Moscow's top theater directors". It will be repeated on Saturday at 10:45 a.m., which is good because another Russian movie, The Letter That Was Never Sent, starts at 4:45 p.m. Friday. The story follows four geologists in the Siberian wilderness. The final Russian film is The Forty-First, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957. It plays Friday at 8:15 p.m.

Many of us have turned our Russian adoption stories into blogs and books. South Florida playwright Susan J. Westfall turned hers into a play. On May 9, the Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables, Fla. Will begin a three-week run of The Boy From Russia. The theater says it is the story of a couple who adopt an orphaned boy they met through an adoption agency video.

Go to another corner of Florida for several performances of Swan Lake. The Orlando Ballet is closing its season with a performance of the Tchaikovsky classic, accompanied by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. Performances run from May 10 to May 13, and include both evening and matinee performances.

Baltimore, one of my family's favorite places, is the place to be on Saturday, May 12 at 11 a.m. for a performance of the Russia children's classic Peter and the Wolf. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform with the Bob Brown Puppets at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

If you can't be in Baltimore, there will be a dancing version of Peter and the Wolf at Ballet Long Island in Ronkonkoma on May 16 at 11:30 a.m.. Call (631) 737-1964 for tickets.

Leningrad-born author Gary Shteyngart will be the headliner at a dinner, book reading and discussion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 17 at 6:30 p.m. Shteyngart is the author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook.

And finally, an apology. I missed noting a performance of the Russian opera Boris Godunov at Princeton University last month. But Princeton is hosting an ongoing exhibit of stage models, costume designs and other works on the opera at its Milberg Gallery through September 4.