BODY AND SOUL: Elena Demyanenko: The art of disobedience

Elena Demyanenko (photo: Charles Pace)

In this portrait set against a black background, Elena Demyanenko faces downward and at a diagonal. She is light-skinned with short, reddish hair and wears a thin necklace with a stone pendant.

Russian-born dance artist and educator Elena Demyanenko traveled from her adopted home in New York to Berlin to support the growing community of artists fleeing Russia's devastating war on Ukraine. In this moving talk, Demyanenko reflects on questions for herself and other artists making work in times of war, propaganda, censorship, and courageous disobedience.

 

Listen to Elena Demyanenko on Body and Soul podcast here. 

To learn more about her work, scroll down. 

 

Trio from Demyanenko's welter (photo: Wolfgang Daniel)

In this trio dance, Elena's right shoulder leans against the floor as her legs stretch up and her feet connect with and hold Chloë Engel’s head as Engel's body bends forward. Leah Morrison kneels nearby and observes.

Bio: Elena Demyanenko is a Russian/American dance artist, choreographer, improviser, maker of dance films, and educator who lives and works between New York City and Vermont. Elena has extensive professional performance and choreographic experience in a multicultural context from 30 years of touring around the world. She has been inventing “impossible” scores in order to un-censor the body as a source of information and a  primary site of healing and transformation. Elena is a former member of both Stephen Petronio Company (2003–2008), and Trisha Brown Dance Company (2009–2012). She has made dances with Dana Reitz, Susan Sgorbati, Joseph Poulson, Dai Jen, Pavel Zustiak, Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Kota Yamazaki, and Jimena Paz. Elena’s live performance works have been shown at many US performance venues, including Baryshnikov Art Center, Danspace Project, Roulette Intermedium, EMPAC, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, and Dixon Place, and abroad at GARAGE (Moscow) and the Architecture of Movement Festival (Yaroslavl, Russia). As a maker of dance films, Demyanenko was the recipient of a Dance Movies Commission by EMPAC and was nominated for the Dance on Camera Jury Prize for her work on kino-eye.  www.elenademyanenko.com

Manifesta opens the way to the art of resistance in Russia

Allowed a Space in Russia for Criticism, Artists Have Fun With It
by Sally McGrane, The New York Times, October 9, 2014

Yara in lands of dreamy dreams

L-R: Andrew Colteaux, Ainura Kachkynbek kyzy, Christopher Ignacio and Kat Yew     
(Photo: Margaret Morton)

Virlana Tkacz's Yara Arts Group, a longtime, beloved resident troupe at La MaMa, already serves as a visible, tangible "collective unconscious" for us, a gossamer repository of sound, imagery and story from the far reaches of human culture. The company's new piece, Dream Bridge--a multidisciplinary and polyglot collaboration with artists from Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan--offers sensory pleasures as might be expected from a reimagining of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as well as some jarring elements. In other words, it is the stuff that dreams are made on.

The piece basically visualizes two works by celebrated Ukrainian poet Oleh Lysheha. It's a bit awkward that, as part of the program, the audience must be instructed to take time to read the translated poems right before the piece starts, while Kyrgyz musician Nurbek Serkebaev plucks spare notes from a stringed instrument. I happened to finished reading just in time but still felt that I had not completely absorbed and processed the poetry. Worse still, I was still in the grip of jet lag--which feels like, at a certain hour, an invisible hand reaches out and gives my dimmer switch a decisive downward turn--and felt myself drifting in and out of awareness as the gentle-toned, lulling Dream Bridge and its fairytale-like plot moved swiftly along. I was lost, and I feel pretty bad about that. 

I most clearly recall a pristine cluster of drifty, floaty characters, a man (Andrew Colteaux) trying in vain to sleep while curved over a rigid arch and, most impressively, a truly enchanting emergence of shadow puppets which I won't spoil by describing. I wanted more time with those puppets, but the piece was over, and it was time to go out into the jarring streets--East Village on a Thursday night? OMG--where a sudden, completely irrational craving for potato chips led me to the less-soothing sensory overload of St. Mark's Place.

Tkacz's productions have sometimes deeply moved me. While I suspect that Dream Bridge would probably never have as profound an effect on me as, say, Howling--her 2002 piece inspired by ancient shamanic legends about wolves and a Wolf clan from Siberia--her projects are always worth a look. You can catch Dream Bridge now through May 13, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 PM, Sundays at 2:30 PM. Get more information, ticketing and directions here.

Created by Virlana Tkacz. Kyrgyz traditional music performed live by Nurbek Serkebaev and an electronic score by Kyiv composer Alla Zahaykevych. Performed by Yara actors Andrew Colteaux, Brian Dolphin and Christopher Ignacio plus Kyrgyz actors Kenzhegul Satybaldieva, Ainura Kachynbek kyzy and Ukrainian actor Mykola Shkaraban. Designed by Watoku Ueno.

La MaMa E.T.C. (First Floor Theater)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

A "Raven" landing at La MaMa

Yara Arts Group presents Raven

Virlana Tkacz, her enchanting Yara Arts Group and artists from Ukraine have teamed up for a new production--Raven--presented at La MaMa. Inspired by the poetry of Oleh Lysheha, who was awarded the PEN Poetry Translation Prize for his work, Raven concludes its run this coming Sunday. Performances are at 7:30pm, tonight through Saturday, with a Sunday matinee at 2:30pm.

Raven speaks to our desire to explore unknowable boundaries. Sharply delineated details from everyday life transform to reveal the true nature of reality. Birds, trees and fruit bear messages for the careful observer. The forest protects the secrets of the invisible path. Yara's production uses music, movement, song and voice to explore the images of the poem, which is spoken both in the original and in its English translation by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps.

Ticket information

La MaMa (First Floor Theatre)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)