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Yara Arts Group in “ Virtual Souls”. In photo: Eleanor Lipat, Cecilia Arana, Zabryna Guevara and Erzhena Zhambalov as the swans, directed by Virlana Tkacz. At Buryat National Theatre in Ulan Ude, Siberia, September 7, 1996. Photo credit: Watoku Ueno. squeezed in. A monk was chanting. I had seen him be fore; later I realized it was in a picture standing next to the Dalai Lama. The chanting continued for the next sev eral hours. Light streamed in from the top of the tent. I felt time merge and expand. A thousand years ago things were done exactly this same way. Then a Russian soldier entered. You could taste the sudden tension. But he sat down exactly right with a lotus flower in his hand. A soft sigh escaped from the congregation. It was only a noviti ate out to prove he had learned his lessons well. Then we were all running to the construction site a bit further off. During the summer a dormitory had burned down, killing three student monks. The datsan had to be built further away. Tania was telling us where to stand. She wasn't going to let anyone stand in front of her guests from New York. After many prayers, a blue silk scarf was placed in the hole dug for the cornerstone. We were told to throw in coins for good luck. Tom pulled out a New York City subway token. Some archeologist is really going to be scratching his head about the signifi cance of that someday. Next morning we met the three Buryat actors who were going to work with us. Erzhena and Sayan Zhambalov were a married couple. They were the young stars of the Buryat National Theatre. A few years before they had walked out of this theatre and only recently had been convinced to return. They had organized their own shows and also a rock band, Uragsha (Forward) which was at the forefront of a resurgence of pride among young Buryats. Sometimes conversations with them re minded me of my first talks with the Ukrainian rock star Vika. The third person we worked with was Erdeny Zhalt- sov, who was both an actor and a musician. He played the morin kuur, the horse-head fiddle, a two string tradi tional instrument that can sound like a cello. After the introductions Erzhena spoke to me directly in Russian. (At the theatre they usually speak Buryat, which is related to Mongolian and Kalmyk.) I answered in Ukrainian. We understood each other. We were all very relieved. It is so hard to work through a translator. I told them about the show. Afterwards she told me that their cousin, who was 18, had been a soldier. His body had arrived that morning by train from Chechnya. I told them to go take care of things. We had a TV interview and then visited the eth nographic museum. We saw beautiful stone assemblages that displayed a surprising modern sensibility although they were put together thousands of years ago. We also saw traditional felt gers , and wooden ones, as well as bark tents inhabited by Evenki shamans. There also were the beautifully carved wooden houses of the Old- Believers, the first exhiles to Siberia, sent here by Peter the Great for refusing to cut off their beards. A tiny zoo had camels and we were told that during the purges in the 1930s camels were executed in this area. Now they are treated with special respect. Next morning we drove out to Ivolginsk Datsan, a Buddhist monastery at the foot of the Khamar-Daban Mountains. It held out as the center of Buddhism in the USSR after 37 datsans and 10,000 monks were de stroyed in the 1930s. Fortunately, however, much of the art work from those datsans is still preserved in Ulan Ude in what is known as "the Fond." Located in the Hodigitrira Cathedral, the Fond originally was a museum of anti- religious art. Thousands of Buddhist sculptures, tankas, vestments, banners, musical instruments and sacred volumes now line the shelves. The Orthodox Church is demanding that the building be returned, but there is no where else to house the collection. Next morning we walked around Ulan Ude, founded in the 17th century as a Russian garrison. The Russians we met would always remark that we had just missed a great event - the celebration of the 330 years of the Joining of the Buryat People to the Great Russian Nation. (Later in Moscow I saw a building Stalin con structed in 1954 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the 18 ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 1997 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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