Why one would need to get married?

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• Combine life paths (obsolete)
• Combine capital
• Combine glory
• Continuation of the species
• It’s time
• Registration
• Love
• Forced by parents
• The land question (bargaining for half a kingdom)
• Acceptance
• Lets do it!
• Other

There are stereotypes of social behavior, passionately hated by me.

In different cultures and peoples, the wedding is perceived in different ways.

Somewhere it is a festival, somewhere - the end of life, somewhere just a business agreement.
Somewhere polygamy, somewhere monogamy, somewhere monochrome, somewhere - three in one. With leaky laws, you can marry the deceased or marry a cat.
The whole story.

The Serbian version by Ana Sokolović is just one of the lines from this intricate folio.

Perfect in musical form, harmoniously and rhythmically throwing us into a Serbia which is no more, this “capella” work contains few words, which is how it should be in the forms of rituals, tunes, dialects, lamentations.

Music itself is an inviolable Cosmos. But one day someone could not resist and shoved the word “meaning” into it.

Opera is one of the well-aged heirs of this error.

And it took me into two worlds.

The first - domestic: the story of the heroine and her girlfriends. A history of lives.

The other - operatic: there is Music and Voice. It’s another hypostasis, emasculated.

A history of symbols, it also has the right to exist, but without the first world, is uninteresting.

For a long time I’ve practiced the stage arts, but still haven’t decided for myself what the relationship between man and the theatre is. The combination of reality and unreality is what interests me. And this production is another attempt to understand that,

What is art,
What is music,
What is singing,
What is human life.

Sokolovich’s “Wedding” - a hymn to the hopes of Women.
But they don’t come true for her.

And in a small two-story greenhouse, time will get intertwined.
Above - Notes, Throats and the anguish of operatic powder, searching to become natural.
Below - the same thing, but running on the crooked tracks of time, our lives.
From the sweaty phone booth and - “where did you hang out?” - to the marriage trap.

This is a dance of the five gateways of life. Five girls.

Childhood, adolescence, the WEDDING, everyday life and finally … through pots and pans and a belief in the next day - to meet with a gnarled old woman.

“As they say, the story is “set in stone”.

I’m not a director. I’m an actor first of all. And a dancer. In my company, DEREVO, I’m called “colander” because I sift out all kinds of rubbish, leaving only the best.

And it’s not so important that the viewer understands me literally.

It is important that during the rehearsals something happened in the girls and singers, and they remember this time.

The rest is on stage.

Anton

Translated by David Kemp

June 9th
“OKSTIS”
Dance action dedicated to stubbornness, a split personality and the heavenly bastards.
Music - Vladimir Volkov (double bass, voice)

June 10th
“HARAM”
We are told there
We are told we must
We are told we cannot speak
We are told
Don’t you dare
On the wall there is a fist
Youth has no dusty memorial

June 11th
“WARM-BLOODED”
This dance is about muscles, joints, pulse and blush, about shoulders and hugs, coughing and laughing, wince and desire. And the fact that the body’s language is still not available to us.

June 16th
“OVARY”
You are a donor and a vampire
Mother and father
Finger and ring
Cheek and slap in the face
God and the Devil
You are always two
This is the madness of the Force
Let it sparkle!

June 17th
“SNAKE TIME”
I am the king of nature, I am a man
I feel like I can’t stay sitting
We must create, sell, buy, break and build
I am the master of the illusion of activity
All grief and bubbling
And only after dinner will I calm down for an hour, digesting like a coiled snake hat
And, having drunk a cup of tea, I will stop the War

June 17th
Live concert of the AVIA & Anton Adasinsky

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Katja Pietrusky, Roman Ekimov, Elena Yarovaya

English text editor: David Kemp
Photo & Video: Makhina Dzhuraeva

A week passed - my dreams haven’t changed
Endless celebrating faces, colourful flyers on the ground, the city covered with thousands
of posters, all the shows, performances, concerts…
We’ve barely left and we want to come back again
To go out in the street and look around, proudly thinking: there’s more of us, actors, here
than of you, visitors.

We played 24 shows in 26 days

What happened:
Makhina debuted in the role of Oleg
Alexey Popov debuted as Cupid
Never sleeping, Merkushev drove his standard 5000 km
People came who saw ONCE… 20 years ago
People came who had never seen ONCE… the children of those first ones

David ran onto the stage for the first time

What didn’t happen:
Guiness beer (god knows why)
A visit to ‘Sharmanka’ (what a shame)
Any quarrels coming from exhaustion (surprising for the Fringe)

I think a hamster running in a wheel must be happy!
His road never ends.

Anton

I’ve started rehearsals of the new project dedicated to Osip Mandelstam at the Gogol Centre in Moscow.
Chulpan Khamatova ― the Soul
I ― the Chitin of a Poet
and eight of the coolest guys from Kirill Serebrennikov’s troupe. We have already worked together in “Who Is Happy In Russia”.

Made the first photo proofs for my solo work “The Well-Tempered Clavier”. My knowledge of Uber-Marionette theory will be put to a full use here.
Lena Yarovaya did 12 solo performances at the medieval fair in Dresden.

We’re going to Edinburgh! What for? I do not know. No. I know.
There, in Edinburgh, we’re at home, on the street every second person - an artist, and the bartenders are not versed in art worse than the pros from the Scotsman or Herald.
Why are we bringing ONCE… ?
It’s more complicated to answer.
Four years we’re searching for fun for our kids ― a task more and more difficult.
A serious and troubled world doesn’t do much for children.
Hard times.
And you can’t go far with cartoons from the 50s and 60s.
And I want to take them to the theatre, a fairy-tale. Splendid and rich…
And even more, I MYSELF want to go to a good film. And that takes a long time to find.

Although “good” ― it’s not the right word. Well… at least I don’t want any morals: children are smarter than adults; drinking is bad; insects are aliens (or vice versa); Galápagos giant tortoises sacrifice themselves to stop evolution…

From the first line, the first picture, the first sound, I know whether they will eat a piece of my life… or… suddenly the heart beats stronger, the sparks run around my fingers and someone’s soul embraces my face like an oxygen mask. I, after all, like everyone else, I guess, someday everything will be fine. And I have to believe that in these hidden dreams I am not alone.

“ONCE…” ― it is eternal. Like Robinson Crusoe or Gagarin, or artificial snow under the Christmas tree, like a thundering old tram, like the drumming of domino stones in the backyard.
A ray of light leaves my chest and turns to a moon. It rises to the stars and suddenly there’s a shadow! It’s me. I’m so small, crossing the moonpath on a toy comet!
And this is what I’m ready to watch forever.
During August, every day we will catch a Miracle by the ear.

Anton

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Video: Andrey Gladkikh
Photos: Makhina Dzhuraeva, Elena Imamova, Igor Fomin

P.S. Such an irony: yesterday in the middle of the show the fire alarm has set off, so the audience and we too - accompanied by friendly clapping - were escorted outside. We spent a couple of relaxed minutes in the sun together with Mary Brennan.

We knew a guy we called Nesta. I don’t remember - whether it was a nickname or from a cut-down surname.
Nothing special: soft voice, always half-turned to his companion,
Always the same sweater a la mid-60’s bard,
Stout white arms.
But two things made him stand out from our bunch.
First, for example, he would ask if anyone had the book “Unhurried Pace” by Lorca, or if someone had heard the metal band “The Cheekbone” from Volgograd.
Fabrications both, one and the other, which would lie firmly memorized!
And second.
After lunch in the college canteen, we walked into the courtyard, sat on a secluded bench,
Nesta pulled up his singlet, and we could see his stomach working. On the belly were waves of digestion.
The sight was mesmerising. While we were watching it for the first time, he said - “The Ships of Liss”, forever encoding us, invoking the black and white moustache of Alexander Grin against the background of a dancing navel.

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Elena Yarovaya

Mephisto Waltz – always a struggle.
I struggle with my current reluctance to shake Death’s scythe and with the drunken genius of Shalyapin.
Gustav Holst struggles with electronics by Daniel Williams.
The audience struggles with the eternal “Planets” and today’s DEREVO.
　
We perform in the territory of the question:
“Is this Theatre?”
“What is this?”
　
In the past, less time was needed to take the audience into the zone of paid lunacy.
Interesting.
　
My solo work “Shell” has finally happened!
I want more!
　
And now, with the original cast, “La Divina Commedia” in Dresden!!
Tanya, Lena, Oleg, Alexey and me.
As the saying goes – HURRY! NOT TO BE MISSED!
　
Anton Adasinsky

English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Natalia Korenovskaya

DEREVO performed at the opening of Mikhail Chemiakin’s photo exhibition ‘Carnival of Venice’ in the Russian Museum. Photos by Lena Yarovaya are also exhibited.

Now we’re getting ready for MEPHISTO WALTZ at Erarta in St. Petersburg.

And for ‘The Shell’ — my solo work of words and music

Finally my first book is now compiled.

It’s an attempt to capture the images, dreams and visions that had an impact on our performances or simply were a pill for sadness, or a prayer to the mirror, or a scratch on Petersburg’s grey skies, or for any other reason why I’m almost there…

And every day I’m assured that we’ve been given a wonderful world!

The Shell

only in Russian now, coming up in english later.

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Anna Bogodist, Elena Yarovaya

“Behold a man who has commenced his run
Way back when dawn broke over the whole universe…”*

A corridor of a hospital.
It is not very clean and the interior is old.
Along the corridor a couple drift.
A boy warmly dressed in a sweater, 11 or 12 years old
Just behind — a man, with his head held unnaturally thrown back, with his face disfigured by burns.
He wears two dressing gowns.
And some hospital jacket on top
Pajama pants, dirty at the bottom, and completely barefoot.
At the exit door they are caught by either an orderly or a doctor.
He grabs the boy:
— Have you taken the rug?
The boy shows him a bundle under his arm.
The Burned looks somewhere above their heads, somehow through them…
They go down the steps and as soon as the man feels the ground under his feet he takes off and runs.
Apparently — it’s the hospital’s recreation park.
He runs along the wire fence.
The boy runs after him and it feels like this is their usual activity.

Dynamic shot.
But there must be a glitch:
Either the camera slows down or the fence grille becomes more aggressive, and the light flickers, gets dark

Snow cloud.

And the snow falls and melts on his face
And his cheeks flush, with death

Out of a hospital window a nurse with an unhealthy boy in her arms looks at the Burned and his young companion.
They sit on a bench.
The man’s feet are wrapped in a towel, under his feet the rug covering the snow.
He doesn’t notice it
There, far below

Very wide shot (Bruegel’s “The Hunters in the Snow”?)

There’s an almost finished snowman.
Instead of hands he has twigs. Many of them.
The urchins have conceived something and the Burned knows what.

— Take it to them

He gives the boy a box of matches,
The boy purses his lips and runs down.
He stumbles on the way. Falls slapstick in the snow. He gets up and turns around.
The Burned is lying awkwardly on his side on the bench.
The boy with a scream runs back from the bench directly to the hospital building.

The snowflakes on the face of the Burned do not melt any more.

The children down below somehow set fire to the snowman’s twigs.
Fire and snow.
The white Idol melts, a white toy!!
A carrot nose and button eyes!
This is forever!
He will burn — and take you with him!

A fool in the window:

— What rotten heathens!…

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Anna Bogodist, Elena Imamova, Elena Yarovaya
* from Bella Akhmadullina, Transl. by Gregory Freidin

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Anna Bogodist, Evgeny Sinyaver, Evgeny Pronin