THE BUTOH-a-GO-GO MOSCOW REPORT - 2006

photo: baby mia

Getting There

2006 June 1 at 0820 hours airborne Thomas and I were on Air Canada flight 8620 heading towards Moscow via Toronto and Vienna. Coincidentally included on our flight's guest-list was Canadian dance luminary, Vancouver's own Susan Elliott, en route to performances of "Falls the Shadow" at the CanDance Touring Exchange in Guelph. How bazaar is that?! We thought being in such good company was a definite good sign.

On this flight Thomas and I had our first "ON BOARD CAFÉ SERVICE" experience - a menu of three sandwiches and about a dozen other snack items ranging from Mr Noodles to baby carrots with vegetable dip for fairly reasonable prizes. A bit miffed at the blatant captured audience feeling of this marketing experience initially we passed on the offers from the service crew but later we broke down and purchased two very mediocre eggy-muffiny things which tided us over until snacks at our Toronto three and a half hour stop-over.

While waiting to transfer in Toronto there was a funny incident of note: an announcement was made in regards to there being a problem with half of the toilets on the Austrian Airlines airbus for the eight and a half hour flight to Vienna, but that the pilot had decided to go ahead as scheduled but would ask all passengers to please go to the toilet before leaving the Toronto airport and to keep drinking on the flight to a minimum.

Freshly 'evacuated' at 1825 hours we left Toronto. The eight and half hour flight to Vienna was filled with intermittent napping, "multi-meals", a range of very mediocre movies played on our personal headrest-mounted video screens, and a couple of very humourous announcements made in the sweetest soft Germanic female voice asking passengers to please refrain from drinking and using the working bathrooms as much as possible - threatening an emergency landing if the tanks reached an over-flow level. The looks on some of the other passengers faces was hysterical. Thomas and I roared with laughter.

Our Vienna stop-over was a mere hour and forty-five minutes. At 1045 hours we were air-bound for Moscow. Two and a half hours later at 1520 local time we were at Sheremetyevo airport an hour out of the city - Twenty hours since we had left Vancouver.

Being There

Julia, Ballet Moskva's (Moscow Ballet) resident composer and music consultant met us at the airport and escorted us to the Peking Hotel in the middle of the theatre district a few blocks from Pushkin Square in central Moscow. That evening Thomas and I walked to festival venue, the Pushkin Theatre and saw the first twenty minutes of a the South African company, SABT, full of young classically trained dancers. It was a bit too 'classical' for my liking, although later we found that the Russians very much enjoyed this company. Afraid we would fall asleep during the second and third acts Thomas and I left the theatre and went for a long walk and were in bed by 11:30 that evening. We slept a good ten hours - the longest sleep we were to have for our entire stay.

The following day, Saturday, we had a hearty breakfast at around 1100 hours and showed up for our tech rehearsal at the scheduled 1330. At 1500 our rehearsal actually began. Working with Ballet Moskva's lighting technician, Dmitri, and our assigned interpreter, Margo, it took us until 1800 hours to set our lights. Afterward there was just enough time to do a television interview, get into make-up and costume and get on stage just in time for our show - The World Premiere of Working Title: Vancouver (renamed to: IN THE RED (WT:V) for North American premiere July 10th & 11th at Vancouver's Dancing On The EDGE Festival)

The fear factor was unbearable although the show went well with a few minor technical glitches. It ended with a rousing round of applause, cheers of "Bravo!" and the very Russian syncopated clapping showing an added level of appreciation. What a relief!

Quickly we cleaned up so we could get to the front of the house to watch the next performance. As soon as we hit the lobby, Maria Makhardze the executive director of the festival approached us saying dancers from the Ballet Moskva's contemporary company asked if we would teach a workshop. Flattered we immediately conceded. Then as we sat down in our seats in the theatre we were unexpectedly approached by audience members with programs and pens in hand eagerly requesting autographs!

We were euphoric as the house lights went down for the next program to begin - an offering from visiting Swedish company, Claire Parsons Co. Not so well received close to thirty percent of the Russian audience simply got up and left. The violinist did give a performance worth noting - The audience cheered as this musician rhythmically dragged a table and two chairs across the stage.

From this day on both Thomas and I suffered from irregular sleep patterns as we garnered no more than four hours of continuous sleep at a time. Although we were getting to bed before midnight, we seemed to be wide awake around three or four in the morning leaving us very spent around three in the afternoon. Sunday and Monday we attended festival performances of Provisional Danza (Spain), Wee - Dance Company (Germany), The Polish Dance Theatre - Poznan Ballet (Poland), and Dance Works Rotterdam (Netherlands). The Spanish wowed us with theatricality including nudity (my favourite) although were disappointing with the usual men roughing about the women theme. The Germans' contact improv techniques made for an exceptional otherworldliness. The Dutch company was clean and technical with very classical lines and themes. The Polish were our favourite with well crafted work including tension, drama, exceptional music and stellar performances.

On Tuesday it was our turn to perform again. We were programmed between a Ballet Moskva premiere and another offering from the Dutch company. Both required white floors, so in our noted flexible and pleasant 'Canadian' fashion we offered to perform our second night on a white floor.

Our technical rehearsal scheduled from 4 PM to 6 PM was cut to fifteen minutes, during which time we did manage to fix the technical problems from the Saturday evening performance.

Because the Russian company was performing before us we decided to try to watch a half hour of it before going backstage to prepare. It was a nicely stylized work with the entire stage area fashioned into a white Holodeck™ like box with white floor, white back drop and white cycloramas on the stage left and right perimeters. From what we saw of the work it was very physical and playful, laced with some interesting Russian cultural themes.

As we were waiting to get into make-up in our dressing room, before our second show both Thomas and I were so sleep deprived that we could barely keep our eyes open. Jokingly we pleaded with the gods not to let us fall asleep during our performance. Luckily once in costume and make-up our adrenalin kicked in.

The second performance of Working Title: Vancouver came in almost a full two minutes tighter than the first and the reaction of the audience was tremendous - resounding BRAVO!s and endless applause.

Sated, Thomas and I leisurely cleaned up in enough time to join the after-party hosted by festival director, Nicolai Bassin and festival sponsor, Boris Teboev. Uncharacteristically both Thomas and I steered away from the vodka offered and imbibed in moderate amounts of red wine although partook in much of the party buffet. This was a festive affair with many toasts and even a special gift of song sung by the sponsor, a very accomplished singer. Later both Thomas and I were presented with recordings of his work which we will play for pre-show music at our Vancouver Dancing On The EDGE showings of IN THE RED (WT:V) July 10th and 11th.

The next day we were to conduct our very own two hour butoh workshop. Ballet Moskva company members Mula and Victor met us at our hotel at 11 AM and drove us out to what seemed like an abandoned industrial building that had a portion of it remodeled into large dance studios. Fourteen workshop participants consisting of company members and a few outside visitors participated. Excited by the introduction of our particular brand of butoh and with no clock in the room (There is a Russian saying that goes something like, "You do not look for the time when you are having a good time") the workshop stretched into three and a half hours.

Afterwards Mula, Victor and Mikhail took us out for and amazing Tunisian feast. Then Victor continued on with us giving us a tour of some of the sites we had missed, including Moscow's equivalent to Urban Fair - where historically the elite Muscovites were able to buy, for a dear ruble, just about anything from specialty food items to Fabergé Eggs. He also took us to an incredibly high-end restaurant in the Pushkin House which allowed us to walk through. Both Thomas and I felt as if we were peasants observing the bourgeois in their own habitat - very surreal. At one point Victor asked us to look up at a billboard just in time to see our own names flash on a marquis which he had programmed from his cell phone.

Exhausted Thomas and I hit the hay at 10 PM in preparation for our trip home.

Getting Home

At 2 AM our alarm went off and by 2:50 we were in a cab heading to the airport. Bleary-eyed we boarded our flight to Vienna at 5:50 AM. A seven hour stop-over in Vienna stretched to eight and a half leading into the eight and a half hour flight to Toronto. There we were left with less than an hour to catch our connecting flight to Vancouver, but catch it we did. As we landed in rainy Vancouver we sighed a sigh larger than the city itself - It was good to be home and yet sad to be separated from the surreal Russian world where we were once revered as some kind of cultural royalty.

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you to:
Ballet Moskva, Beaumont Studios and Playhouse, Brian Heinrich, CADA, Coal Harbour Community Centre, DancersDancing, David Bircham, Firehall Arts Centre, Gallery O Contemporary, Harbour Dance Centre, Heather Dundas, Holly Holt, Ink Oink Art Inc, Ira Cook, Joanne Corcoran, Jon Hicke, Kokoro Dance, Marcus Skidley Greatheart, Masha Makhardze, Nathan Strijack, Nicolai Bassin, Nicole Dextras, Paulina Kee, Science Friction Productions, Scott Ashton Swan, Susan Reynada. ...and a special thanks to everyone who attended our May 13th and May 27th fundraisers!
With out your support, financial assistance and time this project would not have been possible.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!

For more information please contact:
Kevin Bergsma
2122 Alberta St
Vancouver, BC V5Y 3K3
ph: 604-873-3334
email: butoh@kevinbergsma.com