October 2011 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Jerzi Grotowski: Training and Rehearsal

Jerzi Grotowski, a Polish stage director and theatre philosopher, even got to study at the Lunacharsky Institute of Theatre Arts for two years in 1950s. Although they evidently didn’t miss him going (for health reasons), they later were immensely proud to once have had such an outstanding student.

In the video below is a recording of Grotowski’s rehearsal with his actors. As Slava Polunin explains, Grotowski with his “poor theatre” was a gateway to the theory of Stanislavsky, albeit from a side door:

I got acquainted with Stanislavsky through Grotowski. I found interesting this phenomenon of an artist’s fantastic self-sacrifice during the performance that he had already finished calling so by then. There he fell into hysterics, he revealed his subconscious, even some very intimate parts of it… Once again, this is where one needs intuition and consideration. I followed Grotowski to see, whether an actor can perform tragedy, burning himself down and trying his physics. By means of the clownery as the most relative of the arts, I wanted to reveal the real human pain. And eventually I came to Stanislavsky via Grotowski. I have realized that psychology and clownery can co-exist.

The rehearsal follows some sort of physical training. One doesn’t need to watch very attentively to see that Grotowski was in formidable command of his physique, and every gesture is so beautiful that you contemplate it as a thing-in-itself, an ideal form. Somehow in this video Grotowsky reminds me of Jacques Brel and Mick Jagger, he brims with romantic expression and passion for his “thing”.

Grotowski’s central idea was that of a ‘poor theatre’, the theatre that concentrates on an actor as a centrepiece of the performance, and that abandons excessive stage decor and costumes in order to deliver the essense of a play. Already in 1950s-60s Grotowski compared theatre with a “leisure venue”, similar to a sauna or a restaurant where for a certain fee an actor sells his gift to the adience – very much like a prostitute sells her body. Grotowski’s idea was also to liberate theatre from continuous comparisons against the opportunities of Cinema: theatre offered a very different experience, and so should have been left to develop in as much austerity, as was possible.

Read more: Jerzi Grotowski’ biography at Jason Bennett’s Actors Workshop;

http://vkontakte.ru/video_ext.php?oid=15568&id=161111050&hash=30158e0a54d5b942&sd

An Unknown Lady – Alexander Blok, Ilya Glazunov and Alec Vagapov

Critics consider Ilya Glazunov’s illustrations to An Unknown Lady by Alexander Blok to be the overall finest illustrations of Blok’s work.

An Unknown Lady (Ilya Glazunov)

You could already have read my translation of Blok’s famous poem, Night, a Streetlight, a Street, a Chemist’s. Today I want to acquaint you with translation of another celebrated poem, An Unknown Lady by Alexander Blok. A basic translation under the title “An Unknown Woman” is quite well-known on the web. What makes me particularly happy and proud to present to you a different translation is that it has been done by a Russian Professor of Linguistics who lives and teaches in the city of Pskov. The basic translation not merely pales in comparison, it makes one wonder how on Earth other translators didn’t attempt to render the work in a poetic form.

This translation of An Unknown Lady by Alexander Blok by Alec Vagapov (who specialises in translating Russian poetry into English) is accompanied by an eponymous painting by Ilya Glazunov. The fact that it was painted in 1980 makes it even more beautiful in my eyes. We are told that critics consider Glazunov’s illustrations to Blok’s Verses about the Beautiful Lady to be the overall finest illustrations of Blok’s work.

The heated air in the restaurants
Is  wild and dull as anything,
The drunken  hails are ruled by restless
And noxious spirit of the spring.  

Far off, beyond the dusty alley
Over the boring country side
There is a bakeshop, and the valley
Resounds with crying of a child.  

And every night, beyond the barriers,
Parading, cocking their hats,
Amidst the ditches the admirers
Perambulate with dear hearts.   

Above the lake the creak of ore-lock
And women"s screams impale the place,
And in the sky, the moon disk warlock,
Inanely smiling, makes a face.  

And every night, my friend appears
As  a reflection in my glass,
Like me, he"s stunned  and  set at ease
By magic liquid, drunk en mass.
 
The footmen, true to their habits,
Relax at tables next to us,
And drunkards, staring like rabbits,
Exclaim: In vino veritas!  

And every evening at this hour
(or is it just a dreamy case?)
A waist in satin, like a flower,
Moves past the window in the haze.  

Without drunken men to hinder,
Alone, she walks across the room
And settles down by the window
Exhaling fog and sweet perfume. 
 
There is a kind of old times flavour
About her silky clothes and things:
Her hat, in mourning plumes as ever,
Her hand and fingers, all in rings.  

I feel her close (a strange emotion),
And looking through the veil, I see
The  vast of an amazing ocean,
The coast of an amazing sea.
  
I am informed of inmost secrets,
Somebody"s sun is now all mine,
My  body, heart and soul, in sequence,
Have all been pierced by the wine.  

The  ostrich plumes, desired and welcome,
Are gently swaying in my mind,
And  dark  blue eyes, as deep as welkin,
Are blooming  on the distant side.  

Deep in my soul I have some riches
And I"m the one who has the key!
You"re right, you heady monstrous creature!
In vino veritas, I see.   

April 24th, 1906

Translated by Alec Vagapov

The Bolshoi Theatre Reopens (with a Grand YouTube Broadcast)

I visited the Bolshoi Theatre only once, in early 1999. Together with my uni friend we listened to the Stone Guest (Don Juan) opera. We sat literally under the roof, and I got to see the beautiful murals.

Today, October 28, 2011, the Bolshoi Theatre reopens after a few years of restoration works. The gala will take place in just a few hours, and will be a live broadcast on YouTube. With all similar things YouTube have done over the years, I am incredibly proud that Google and the Bolshoi have co-operated for what promises to be perhaps a more widely watched event this year than the Royal Wedding.

To watch the live broadcast, go to The Bolshoi Theatre channel: http://www.youtube.com/Bolshoi

A host of celebrated Russian and foreign figures of Arts and Culture have sent their best wishes to the Bolshoi Theatre. Below are the cordial addresses from Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Roman Viktuyk, a renowned Russian/Ukrainian stage director.

Translation: The Bolshoi Theatre… A paradoxic worldly doctrine of salvation. A marriage of aesthetic opposites. Apollo is the ideal of Beauty, a Greek god of Light and Prophetic vision, the god of Music and Poetry, Apollo represents a dream of beautiful exterior. Dionysius is a Greek god of the grape leaves and wine, the god of irrational force, of ecstasy in dance, he is the god of Joy, of Laughter, of Festival – today’s festival included. This is the festival of an Artist’s theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre, it is the celebration of a harmonious duet of Apollo and Dionysius. The triumph of this duet is the paradoxic worldly doctrine of salvation, the God-given doctrine. The Bolshoi, I greet you on the occasion of celebration of your Beauty’s renewal, the celebration of salvation through Beauty. Roman Viktuyk.

On behalf of myself and you, I congratulate this grand, old, and beatiful Russian theatre with a re-opening and wish it many happy returns of theatrical seasons on the new stage!

Read about how the Bolshoi Theatre brought me back to Moscow from the UK, and about two ballets with the Bolshoi stars that my uncle, Vadim Derbenyov, filmed: Carmen Suite and Spartacus.

Turkish Star Wars, or When Flash Gordon Met Bach

I watched The Man Who Saved the World in November 2005. The first time we observe someone’s attempt to go out of their way to replicate something it usually makes us laugh. So, I guess the attitude to this flick has to depend on whether or not we believe the creators were making it with tongue in cheek. If they did, then Turkish Star Wars must be one of the best parodies out there. If they didn’t, the film is one of the worst ever. This is what I wrote in my review of it in 2005:

So, on to the movie. It does not owe to Star Wars as much you think it may, judging by the title. This film is not a parody on SW, and although it was supposed to be entertaining, it nonetheless did not scorn Lucas. In terms of a storyline and the imagery, it is a fresh account of Flash Gordon. Nonetheless, SW continuously haunts you in cut-outs. Blessed be the time of the 1980s – “plagiarism” was definitely not in the crew’s vocabulary.

The film opens with a scene of setting a rocket off to space somewhere at either Canaveral or Baikonur. The rocket then miraculously and invisibly transforms into the SW spacecrafts, which seem in our film to be treading between the Earth and the Moon in its first quarter…

These two trends – hard-graft eye-job and the make-believe – continue for the rest of the film, which I am not going to retell you, lest I ruin the impression when you finally get to watch it. And, believe me, there is so much to see: a spiky Excalibur hidden in an Orthodox church; red and black Muppets getting mutilated and decapitated by our space team; not to mention the outstanding SFX. There will be more action scenes, in comparison to which your Bruce Lee is a pathetic karate-kid. Oh, and also there will be a romance, and then there will be one of the tenderest scenes of a male embrace and compassion in world’s cinema. So, there is a lot to look forward. At the same time, Turkish Star Wars shows no sign of sharing the ethic concerns of European and American film-makers. The latter are plagued with enormous guilt every time they have a child being killed in the film. The makers of our movie had little problem with what we would call “an extreme violence”, including some truly outrageous scenes.

Strangely, 5 years later I’m beginning to think that film-makers behind the feature had an incredibly good sense of humour. They mocked everything about the Hollywood blockbusters that was possible. They said a resounding “no” to any traditional acting method and took suspence and hooray-patriotism ad extremum. Even dialogues now read in an entirely different way. While any “normal” hero would be walking in desert, pondering the fate of mankind, the two protagonists are far more down-to-earth: this seemingly uninhabited planet may be populated by women who are checking the guys out from their hidden habitats. But no later they thought so, they are attacked by a herd of horsemen. ‘Okay‘, the main character says, ‘instead of women skeletons came‘.

Consider that, thank to anorexia and dieting obsessions, some women do look like skeletons, and suddenly the Turkish Star Wars become almost prophetic.

As for me, I have always been puzzled at the music choice. While Flash Gordon and Raiders of the Lost Ark made a good accompaniment to the story that was largely lifted from other movies, the sounds of Bach’s Fugue will leave one wondering, exactly what was the motive for choosing one track or another?

A Manchester of the Urals: Yekaterinburg and Cows

Manchester Hindu Cow, 2007

Yekaterinburg Cow, 2011

One of my early years in Manchester was marked by facing the cows. Painted creatures were awaiting me everywhere – pretty much like the penguins did in Liverpool in 2009. Little did I think that cows would be just as popular in Yekaterinburg – the capital of the Urals region that is incidentally nicknamed “Manchester” for its industrial past, rock music, and irreverence to glamour and standards.

Cow “under construction”

Yekaterinburg Cow

Sadly, the very first cow I met in Yekaterinburg was undergoing a little bit of overhauling; but another marked time by the Ratskeller beer restaurant. There are quite a few pubs in Yekaterinburg (yes, PUBs), some Irish, some Scottish, and one is Dutch, called Wallen Pub. I went into the latter on what was the hottest day during my time in the Ural (considering I was overdressed, too!) and had a pint of Irish ale. Which was good, actually.

Yekaterinburg Advertisement: Going to the Gym Gets under Your Skin

Working in the industry once in your life makes you sensitive to it forever. Speaking of Advertising, I love it, and all the more so when I come across odd posters. The one in the photo hangs (probably used to?) on an underground station in Yekaterinburg. Going to the gym has never been so promising, I guess. Or so disturbing?

A Fitness Club advert on Yekaterinburg underground

Moscow: October Rain in Vorobyovy Gory

St. Trinity Church

I try to take regular walks in Vorobyovy Gory, one of my all-time favourite places in Moscow. In fact, I would love to live close enough to be able to go there every other day. This is where the Moscow State University is, and where my late teens and early twenties passed. Autumn has been fairly dry so far, although the Meteorology Centre predicts rains next week. So, this is my Moscow, Vorobyovy Gory between the spells of rain.

Moscow State University

Bloggers Portraits (Or, The Fruits of Improvisation)

I‘m taking part in a photography project by Kirill Kuzmin, Bloggers’ Portraits. This Internet moves in mysterious ways, and I cannot even remember now how I came across Kirill’s blog, but my decision to take part was instant. Yesterday I visited his studio where for the first time I met two other Russian bloggers, and between the four of us we seem to have produced some awesome, if odd, work. The mention of improvising is necessary, as along the way we swapped some “accessories”: I lent my cap, while in the end I got to put on the image I’ve always secretly wanted to wear.

The photos will be available in a short while, and my plan is to shed more light on the project, but in the meantime here are the heroes of the yesterday’s session (arranged, hatted and snapped by Kirill).


Bloggers Portraits: shok_darvina, loscuadernos, tesey

Не успела я приехать в родные пенаты, как мне довелось участвовать в проекте Кирилла Кузьмина “Портреты блогеров” (условия проекта и галереи участников). Пути Интернета сего неисповедимы, и я совершенно не помню, каким образом меня “вынесло” на блог Кирилла, но решение принять участие было моментальным. Вчера же я, наконец, приехала в его студию, где, кроме меня, оказалась еще пара блогеров-рунетчиков, и на четверых мы сообразили нечто замечательное, хоть и немного странное порою. Упоминание об импровизации обязательно, ибо по ходу съемки мы “махнулись” предметами одежды и бутафорией. Я одолжила Евгению свою любимую черную кепку (которую я во время оно безуспешно искала в Манчестере, Лондоне и Оксфорде, но обрела-таки в пригороде Лондона). А потом Евгений предложил дополнить мои Hosenträger головным убором и очками из коллекции Михаила. Так неожиданно я примерила на себя образ, который меня давно интриговал.

Фотографии и прочие материалы будут доступны в скором времени. Пока же – несколько моих портретов (снимал tesey) и групповое фото троих вчерашних героев (взято у shok_darvina).

I’m interviewing Kirill, talking about the project

Meinem anderen Leben…

Moscow Design Week 2011: Made in Italy (Curated by Giulio Cappellini)

Moscow Design Week 2011 - Made in Italy 10

What I definitely liked about this year’s Moscow Design Week is its higher class. Last year’s MDW was a first attempt, clearly done with a bit of scepticism towards its own necessity. The quality of English translation of booklets, the infrastructure of events, venues and displays – all was done for the purpose of actually doing it.

I wasn’t sceptical about MDW’s future, but I was wondering how they were going to improve. The improvement came by almost secretly, I’m sure some people didn’t even realise the Design Week was going to happen. It did happen though and amassed such a huge number of high caliber designers from Europe and America that we are already feeling hungry for more. This is exactly what a girl at the Central Artist’s House said in response to my question, whether or not she enjoyed the Week: “I would love to see more“.

2011 being a cross-cultural year between Russia and Italy, it probably made sense to bring the leading Italian designers to Moscow and to dedicate one of the major exhibitions to all things “made in Italy”. This is also a curious reference to last year’s Design Week when visitors were invited to the Manezh Exhibition Centre to explore ‘the French art of living’. This year it was the same “art de vivre” – but Italian style.

Compared to the Italian, the French “art de vivre” looks almost too classical. Although the French played with matryoshkas and Eiffel towers in their own way, the Matrioska Superhero by Jacopo Foggini, or a classical chair painted in rainbow colours by Giulio Cappellini both breathe new life into familiar, if not dull, objects.

Being a Fabio Novembre Chair

Needless to say, such irreverence to classical things inspires, provokes and prompts. It’s not been the first time ever that I saw and sat down into a Fabio Novembre chair. However, it’s been the first time I realised that the entire experience of sitting in this chair reeks on the plot of the famous film, Being John Malkovich. I called my ‘exploits’ with it rather simply: “Being a Fabio November Chair“.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=107931

La Vie en Jaune: Ivan Bunin’s Cursed Days and the Christ Saviour Cathedral in Moscow

Christ the Saviour Cathedral

I am reading Cursed Days by Ivan Bunin, the Russian 1933 Nobel Laureate in Literature. In the 1917-18 Diary that precedes the narrative there are many remarks about the advance of autumn season. First, Bunin notes the slight chill of August mornings. As September wears on, he painstakingly jots down the changes in colour: maple burn red, while many more trees turn different shades of yellow. “Life in the yellow colour“, he says at one point.

As someone who’s always loved autumn, I was touched by this sentence – all the more so that it could so perfectly be translated into French and to become a paraphrase of a famous song by Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose.

A chapel by the cathedral

Жизнь в желтом цвете. Life in the yellow colour. La vie en jaune. Naturally, when I was walking from one venue of the Moscow Design Week to another, passing the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the cathedral’s dome seen through the leaves was something I instantly knew I had to photograph.