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8 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 2017 CREATING ART THROUGH WAR by Olena Jennings Mariana Sadovska in The Night Is Just Beginning . Photo by Pavlo Terekhov. In the fall of 2016, Mariana Sadovska and Yara artists traveled to Volnovakha, a village near Donetsk in the Donbas region in Ukraine, a region currently affected by the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict. For Mariana, the project prompting this visit started in Mariupol, a city south of Donetsk, when she was invited to perform to show her solidarity with the Ukrainian people’s struggle during the war. It was in Mariupol that she fell beneath the spell of authentic Ukrainian folk culture, which was surprising in a region that is often labeled as “Russified.” She knew she had return to the region to record folk songs and to bring them to people in other regions in Ukraine and in other parts of the world. This is the spark that ignited the project The Night Is Just Beginning , which was performed in conjunction with Yara Arts Group artists at the Ukrainian Museum in New York City on December 16 and 17. As often occurs with artistic endeavors, this project came together through intuition and mysteri- ous connections. To begin with, The Night is Just Beginning features the poems of Serhiy Zhadan and Lyuba Yakimchuk. Though Serhiy and Lyuba weren’t necessarily thinking of the texts of the folk songs when writing their poetry, the poems seem connected to the folk songs by images and rhythm. Both the poets are from Eastern Ukraine so it could be that these commonalities are inherent. An additional con- nection is the venue in which the performance took place. Forty years ago, the UNWLA had the foresight to establish The Ukrainian Museum in New York City. Today “CIM,” the current exhibit at the museum, and events such as The Night is Just Beginning prove that the museum continues to be at the forefront of Ukrainian culture in America. There are even more connections and intuitive decisions involved in the way The Night Is Just Beginning evolved. Not only did Mariana Sadavoska and members of Yara Arts Group experience the songs, but they also participated in the reenactment of traditional ceremonies, mostly preserved and main- tained by village women. One of these is the baking of the korovai , a sweet wedding bread, a tradition that reflects a belief that the fate of the young couple is kneaded into the bread. Coins are placed at the bottom of the baking pan to represent wealth, and crosses of dough are formed to represent spirituality. Mariana
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