Russian

"All I ever needed was the music, and the mirror and the chance to dance," sings the character Diana in the 1976 Broadway musical "A Chorus Line. " Her words ring true for one area dance company, because more than grants or donations or publicity, dancers need space to rehearse and to perform. Performance space becomes an especially rare commodity this time of year with many springtime events and gatherings. The problem of space impacted heavily on Ballet L'Etoile, the Russian Academy of Maryland, and the result is that the Ellicott City-based company is in Carroll County this weekend for this Sunday's "Tribute to Classical Ballet" at Liberty High School in Eldersburg.

Baltimore County police said Wednesday they suspect foul play in the case of a Russian woman who went missing in February as she was traveling to visit relatives in Catonsville. Yulia Pogrebenko, 54, arrived Feb. 23 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and rented a car to drive to Maryland. She made a phone call to a family member to say she was about an hour from Baltimore, police said, but has not been heard from since. Pogrebenko was initially reported missing to Russian police, who notified Baltimore County authorities Thursday, according to police spokesman Lt. Robert McCullough.

Baltimore is blessed with a bunch of talented sports bloggers who bring their unique perspective to the conversation. I often link up to these local writers in my morning Coffee Companion posts, but instead of just exchanging anti-social links with them, I have decided to be slightly less anti-social by exchanging emails with them in a somewhat regular feature called Blogger on Blogger. On the heels of the Capitals' most recent playoff collapse, I wanted to tap into the exceptional pool of hockey bloggers in the D.C. area for our latest installment of Blogger on Blogger.

Some classical music artists, it seems, are available for a limited number of cancellations each year. That's a rap that, for awhile, seemed applicable to Yuri Temirkanov, the inspired Russian conductor who served as Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director from 2000 to 2006. He canceled several weeks with the BSO during his final season and several more, as music director emeritus, in 2007 and 2009. He likewise canceled engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and others during those years.

John Donald Joyce, a retired National Security Agency pioneer and Russian linguist, died of coronary artery disease Jan. 9 at Renaissance Gardens at Riderwood in suburban Washington. He was 80 and lived in Dunkirk in Calvert County. Born in Wilkinsburg, Pa., Mr. Joyce was a 1948 graduate of Pittsburgh's Central Catholic High School and studied at Carnegie Mellon University while a Westinghouse Air-Brake division engineering technician. He enlisted in the Army in 1951 and studied Russian at the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif.

Hyman D. Silberstrom, a Holocaust survivor who later was interned in Siberian labor camps, died Nov. 11 at his Columbia home of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 90. "I was determined to survive!" Mr. Silberstrom told a newspaper reporter in a 1987 interview about his wartime ordeal first at the hands of the Nazis and later the Russians. Mr. Silberstrom was born and raised in Ciechanow, a small town near Warsaw, Poland. He was a descendant of generations of rabbis and Talmudical scholars, family members said.

The Russian owner of Sparrows Point said it plans to extend a partial shutdown of the Baltimore County mill through the first quarter and will temporarily lay off more than 1,000 people by Christmas as it grapples with low demand for steel. On Thursday, Severstal notified state officials, as required by law, about the layoffs that are expected to occur by Dec. 19. The number of employees whose jobs would be suspended includes 668 who have been out of work since July, when company officials first announced a shutdown of the plant's primary operations.

Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov presented his team to the Russian public Sunday, meeting many of the players for the first time and reiterating a vow to turn them into a championship team in five years. The Russian tycoon, who took over ownership in May, hosted an exhibition in Moscow where Nets stars including Devin Harris and Jordan Farmar participated in drills with local children between the ages 8 to 18. Prokhorov high-fived players when they were introduced and later described ambitious plans to make the playoffs in the coming season and win a championship by 2015.