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Гаїлки в Ямниці. Фото Вірляни Ткач. Easter dances in lamnytsia. Photo Virlana Tkacz. Three Sisters and Pushkin’s short plays Mozart and Salieri, Don Juan and The Plague with his theatre from Vilnus, Lithuania. Other productions we saw were: Dula Molnar’s Piccoli Suicidi performed by Claudia De Lo renzo from Milan, Italy; Valery Bilchenko’s production of The Eastern March, an original work created with his Kyiv Experiment Theatre Group; Amleto, an original retelling of Hamlet by the Societas Raffaello Sanzio from Cezena, Italy and Annibal Ruccello’s Ferdinando staged by Roman Viktiuk with Teatr Na Fontantsi from St. Petersburg, Russia. Kyyiv’s Teatr Na Podoli pres ented lago, a production based on Shakespeare’s Othello staged in a swimming pool, which was the hit of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year. The festival was dedicated to the playwright this year and the press conferences that featured each pro duction centered on the question of how the text was formed or reformed by the production. Yara’s press con ference was very well attended and many interesting questions were asked about the process of creating a text in rehearsal. All the major TV and radio stations presented segments on Yara’s show that night. The fes tival also arranged a photo exhibit from Yara’s produc tions 1990-1995, which opened the day of the press con ference and provided the background to Yara’s current work. Originally, we planned to do three shows in Kyyiv, but these were sold out immediately. The festival reques ted that two more shows be added and we agreed. The production was very well received. The reaction to Water fall/Reflections was particularly strong among women in Ukraine. On several occasions after the show audience members would sit down on the floor around the table used in the last scene and tell stories about their own grandmothers. These were unforgettable moments. So was the conversation with Oksana Zabuzhko, Ludmyla Taran, Sofia Maidanska and Solomia Pavlychko, some of Ukraine’s best known young female poets and wri ters, who came opening night. We invited the actors of Kyyiv Experimental Theatre who participated in our workshops to attend one of the performances of Waterfall/Reflections. The discussion afterwards was very interesting and Valery Bilchenko, the director, proposed that we work together on a pro ject. Yara and the Kyyiv Experimental Theatre are now discussing the possibility of a co-production in the near future. After Waterfall/Reflections closed in Kyyiv, I tra veled with my husband, Watoku Ueno, to Ivano-Frank- ivsk. There I presented a lecture on Yara at the Sichynsky Music School, while Watoku taught the students to sing a song in Japanese. Then, together with ethnomusicol- ogist laryna Turianska, we traveled to Verkhovyna in the Carpathians. There laryna introduced us to the Tafiy- chuks, family of folk musicians. Members of this family played traditional instruments such as the trembita (mountain horn), duda (a very unusual bag pipe-like instrument) floiara (primitive flute), as well as a variety of fiddles and drums. They also hand-made these instru ments and even forged the tools they used to make the instruments. We stayed with the family several days and are really looking forward to returning there someday soon. Later laryna and I also visited lamnytsia, a village outside of Ivano-Frankivsk, where we watched hailky, traditional Easter dances. This tradition has seen a real revival in the last few years. As I stood next to the gallery of grandmothers, who carefully watched and commented on every move the children and the teens made, I realized that their memory was our direct link to
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