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Sunday, January 20, 2008
Kitka Shows Invoke Spirit of Rusalki
FOR THE RECORD: The date for the Sunday performance has been corrected in this story.By David Steinberg
Journal Staff Writer
In Slavic myth, the Rusalki are women who are feared. They are restless spirits who may have died unjust or untimely deaths.
Maybe it was because the Rusalki didn't follow the traditional path of womanhood. Maybe they had children out of wedlock or were rejected by lovers.
Kitka, a Bay Area women's vocal ensemble, is tackling the subject through a theatrical production called "The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds."
Known for interpreting Balkan and Eastern European folk music, Kitka began developing the theater project, which merges song and drama.
The group will perform "The Rusalka Cycle" Saturday, Jan. 26, at the University of New Mexico's Rodey Theatre. It is a selection of the Revolutions International Theatre Festival.
Then that same evening in Santa Fe Kitka will give a concert, with excerpts from "The Rusalka Cycle," in Greer Garson Theatre at the College of Santa Fe.
The production started with a song that Kitka members heard in a concert in the mid-1990s at the University of California, Berkeley.
"It was at a Russian village festival and this performance began with a solo singer from Siberia standing in the darkness, invoking the Rusalki," Kitka member Shira Cion said in a phone interview.
"Something about the song got under our skin. It called to us and made it hard to forget."
Fast-forward a few years. Cion was doing field research on music in a Russian village. One evening during a fish barbecue she started walking along the river. Suddenly a grandmother carrying a load of wood ran after her.
"She dropped the wood and shouted, 'Don't go there. This place by the river is very dangerous. The Rusalki live there,' '' Cion recalled.
That prompted Cion to research the subject. She learned that in Slavic folklore these women's spirits live in an in-between state in rivers, forests or fields and are known to lure unsuspecting people, mostly men, with their songs and maniacal laughter. The Rusalki are also known to be half-woman and half-bird or half-woman and half-fish and can change shapes, Cion said.
"This imagery begged for a theatrical treatment and songs," she said.
Kitka recruited Ukrainian singer-actor Mariana Sadovska to write the musical score. In turn, Sadovska invited Kitka and stage director Ellen Sebastian Chang to join villagers in the Ukraine in weeklong rituals that acknowledge the Rusalki.
"Ellen and Mariana clicked, and they created this piece. It's not really a narrative. There are bits of narrative. It's more of a dreamscape," Cion said.
"The music drives the action and it tells a story, but it almost invites the audience to turn off their left brains."
The fully staged production is 75 minutes long and is presented without intermission.
Sadovska, Cion said, wove in traditional material from Poland, Hungary, Bosnia and other countries. The original production premiered in 2005 and, she explained, "it was a surreal travelogue of our trip to the Ukraine. So it had more to do with us and what Rusalki did to us.
"This (current) production has a much more universal feel and gets into the various sides of womanhood— its beauty, fertility and the dark, intense, painful and violent side of womanhood as well."
WHAT: Kitka
WHEN and WHERE: 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26 at Rodey Theatre, Center for the Arts, UNM campus, and 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27 at Greer Garson Theatre, College of Santa Fe, St. Michael's Drive, Santa Fe
HOW MUCH: Tickets for the Albuquerque theatrical production are $18 general public, $12 students and seniors in advance by calling 925-5858 or at UNM ticket offices in the Pit and in the Bookstore or online at www.unmtickets.com or at select Albertsons locations in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho and at the door. Tickets for the Santa Fe concert are $15 and are in advance by calling (505) 473-6196 for credit-card reservations starting Tuesday, Jan. 22 or at the door