[1] After graduating from the Odesa Music and Drama School in 1927,[2] he continued his studies in Moscow, at the Theater Tekhnikum, from 1927 to 1928.

Virsky left Odesa in 1931, and worked as a ballet master at various theatres, including those in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kyiv, working on productions of ballets such as Raymonda, La Esmeralda, Le Corsaire, Swan Lake, and Don Quixote.

Virsky continued his work with folk-themed choreography as the director of the Red Flag Song and Dance Ensemble of the Kyiv Military District beginning in 1939.

In 1955, Virsky returned to Kyiv to helm the State Folk Dance Ensemble of the Ukrainian SSR he founded, which had been reconstituted by others after the conclusion of the war.

For the next 20 years (until his death in 1975) Pavlo Virsky developed the concepts of Ukrainian folk-stage dance further than had previously been imagined.