In the days of rehearsing the AEROKRAFT project based on the music of Nikolay Gusev
I think about war.
I wrote text for eight scenes of the show.
I want the audience to hear the voice and listen to the words
Reading again, I decided that even without the performance these texts are of interest.
Anton Adasinsky

1
I love you, War
How much courage and light are in you
How precisely you cross those t’s and dot those i’s
How doubtlessly it can be decided who is bad and who is good
How clearly you draw the borders and decide on the destinies of countries
How many feelings and cries you give birth to in our hearts
How carefully you help women wait for men
How many hopes for a bright future are born with each shot and each explosion
How many heroes you give to the people
I am ready to go with you to the end of the war

2
I hate you, War
You’re the main thing people remember
You’re the starting point
What was before and after means nothing
You are the main thing
I hate you because you’re sitting in my head with your names and dates
With newspapers, wounds and beggars
I will not live my life happily because you will come to my door and make me suffer
I have one life, and still in this life there will be at least one war
I hate you, War, and wait for you to die

3
God, how cunning you are, War
I’ll never understand what you want
How many people you need to take
How many words you will say in your defense, how natural and glib they will sound
For each death, thousands of letters and arguments for each drop of blood, pages of gabble and lies from the leaders
You’re experienced, War
You’ll outlive us all, you’ll take a different name and start over again.
You’re sly and pratlling, War
You’re lying on your side and drinking a liqueur while others tell lies and make the decisions
And far away in the fields, boys in baggy uniforms play tag with your friend Death

4
I thank you, War
You helped me solve my problems
You persuaded me to make a choice and change my way
You took away my miseries and dried my tears
I will not have to suffer pain or aging
I am grateful to you, War
You took away my life

5
I’m the same as you, War
I’m full of hate and doubt
I need to shake the muscle and arms
I need to justify my lies and violence
I need to be cunning and diplomatic
I too get tired and want rest and silence
and I too am uncapable of just sitting and doing nothing
I too feed myself with blood and rumours
and I too forget why I fight

6
I am your father, War
You are my child, War
I’m a man, I gave you life and I named you, War
I, human
I, the one who is at war
I, the one who kills or spares
And chooses commanders and soldiers
I choose the target and the task
You’re nobody without people, War
We are at war, we the people, and you are just letters in our mouths
I am your father, War and like all fathers I want you to be the best
Grow big, War
I will lean upon your shoulder when I’m old

7
I can not live without you, War
Forgive me, War
If I do not praise your beauty and stature
Oh, how cool and arrogant you are
How forbidding and desirable
Your romance is in our songs and books
The only thing that remains
Where Death is majestic and just
Where Good always wins over Evil
But at some time, of course,
Evil will return
And swords must not rust
And I want to be the best to get into your ranks, War
Forgive me for not praising you every day, War
For only you will bring me away from boredom and malaise
You will give me direction and purpose
And you will make me believe that killing is possible
Finally! This is what we need you for, War
For a man to fulfil his dream, to kill another

8
What words I must find to make you understand how grateful we are, War!
You gave us the work of War!
We sew on buttons and cast bullets
We draw maps and brew spirits for your soldiers
We paint everything khaki and print bulletins
Aeroplanes and tanks
Cameras and boots
Condoms and sights
Vests and briefs, for summer, autumn, nighttime and underwater
Much, much work
We are millions grateful for the possibility to bring home some money and bread
Thank you! Our children will not starve
You give us all something to do
Please do not end, War
Or we’ll be unemployed
What will be left to write and talk about when you’re not there, War?
What else shall we put in our prayers, hymns and plays?

Everything is meaningless without you, War

9
I forget about you, War
I can’t remember, if it was true
If it was near death.
I see different things
How clouds fly by, how life’s rolling past
How children grow, who will never see a war
We were friends, War, but you were the last
You were old, War, living in memories of great battles
You’ve got no skill to fight like a coward
With lies, gold and oil.

You’re decrepit, war
I walked with you, Old Lady War
I wanted to trip you up and watch you dying
I wanted to commit the last murder in the world
To kill you, War

10
I thank you, War
You helped me solve my problems
You persuaded me to make a choice and change my way
You took away my miseries and dried my tears
I will not have to suffer pain or aging
I am grateful to you, War
You took away my life

11
You’re untidy, War
You’re not cleaning up after yourself, War
There is always garbage and leftovers
Dirty memories in the mind
Tattered photos
Destroyed buildings and old bombs
You’re not cleaning up after yourself, War, still in our heads
Shouts and farewells
Letters and smoke
You want us to remember everything
You leave your marks everywhere
Sweep the streets and the cities after you
Wash the rivers
Burn the bones and flood the cemeteries
Give the cripples back their arms and legs
Put their eyes back in their sockets
Make us, force us to forget you
You’re a magician, War
So make anyone who speaks your name, War
Cover his face with the palm of his hand and walk thus till his death

12*
Where’s the power
That will cleanse the Earth
Of all the filth,
The cowardice and lies
Theft and murder
Cities and countries.
Where are you, power?
Be swift, time is short
For we are clever and cruel
And the world is cramped…
Wipe out all the people
No time to swift the good from the bad
Let it again be quiet and clean,
As it was in the beginning…
Maybe next time….

* From the film «Süd. Grenze» (DEREVO, 2001)

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Chester Mueller, Roman Dubinnikov, Elena Yarovaya, Carola Fritzsche

I spent a week in StP.
A record for meetings and conversations.
Meetings all about organising DEREVO’s work in St. Petersburg.
I was not on my own for one minute.
I met the Committee for culture, theaters, directors, officials, students …

Two days of rest and now I try to analyze my feelings

1. This happened in some other world. With this world DEREVO never was connected.
2. I was always in danger in these days.
   • Danger to look independent.
   • Danger to make a compromise.
   • Danger to be misunderstood. Danger of too many jokes. Danger to absorb the private lives, which pour from virtually every interlocutor.
   • Danger to get sick at heart seeing all these people’s insecure plans.
3. When there are millions of troubled people all around you - you will be troubled. The dream is gone. Just whisky and music.
4. Desire to vacuum and clean the shoes.
5. Flashes of anger with vendors and taxi drivers - never had this before.

I leaned too far out of the trench. Could be shot.

The last day, two students came to say their goodbye and thanks for the master class. To speak of the work, I forbade them. They asked - is it possible to smoke.

I gave permission. They smoked a joint and the smell drew from memory a distant morning when I woke up in space. It was 4 am. And from the window flowed a sound that did not belong to Leningrad, nor to the USSR nor to our damp morning courtyard …
I remembered how I went to the window and sat on the windowsill for forty minutes …
My 17 years have been dismissed by the judge. I’ve started from the beginning.

And I did the same thing!
I put an ancient speaker in the window and turned on “Wish you were here” …
But something strange has happened. Soon we became scared.
I reduced the volume - the fear never left.
I turned off everything and had to close the window to calm down.
I showed the girls a book, just bought that evening.
Searched for three years and bought it!
The first small edition of his book “Stone” that Mandelstam paid for himself in 1913.
300 small books that changed my world, and not only mine … We read the poems ….
and Pink Floyd came off and flew back home…
I sang page 8 to them.
That’s all.

Then the taxi and the familiar: “Do you mind turning off the radio?”

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp

Video:

Lyrics by Osip Mandelstam
Music composed and performed by Roman Dubinnikov
Photos from DEREVO archive by various photographers

Hello all,

in October 2014 you can see & listen to Anton Adasinsky on many occasions in St Petersburg:

• autumn school at the New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theater, 7-10 Oct.
• on-line on BalconyTV with the Positive Band, 7 Oct.
• at the talk & film evening at the Angleterre Cinema, 11 Oct
• at the special event for the Mikhail Chemiakin Foundation, 13 Oct.

In the meantime you can watch the documentary (in Russian) “With a rainbow in the heart” by Galina Korshikova. Unique archive footage by Andrey Gladkikh has been used for this film.

Here you’ll find some pictures of our summer projects

• White Fortress, finally I’ve got the main part since Pavel Semchenko of AKHE was busy elsewhere
• Pioneers Parade at Radebeul, it’s all about having fun
• Midnight Balance at Radebeul
• Finale Grande at Radebeul, ten thousands wood pieces and five thousand spectators

Text: Anton Adasinsky
Photo: Elena Yarovaya, Silvio Dittrich, Anton Adasinsky, Igor Fomin, A. Rummler

A Bull engages the same force to see and know an Eagle, as an Eagle does for a Bull”
Alejandro Jodorowsky, ‘The Holy Mountain’

“- How could you lie to a child?
- I can’t wait till she’s grown up”
Barmaley, ‘Aybolit-66′

Good and knowledgeable people leave.
Now Elena Markova has gone.
Her articles in Russian can be found here: http://ptj.spb.ru/author/markova/
How many of you had a chance to meet her in person? Only a few I suppose.

And listening to her, it was the golden hours of our profession. Each time her analysis of DEREVO’s work pushed us to the next level. Conversations and interviews with her helped me to find the idea of an “emotional statuary”. And we too, at DEREVO, called it a “screaming obelisk” or a “crying stone”. And this attempt to break out of the dusty orbit of le mime statuaire was successful. We have become very strong in the stillness…

In person, it’s different when you work or talk to someone.

Three days of working with Grotowski personally gave more to us – DEREVO – than all his books and videos.
In just four hours, Jodorowsky blew my mind further than with his ‘Santa Sangre’.
That’s the reason I want you to meet each other and meet the Knowledge bearers, in person… In short, I’ll work as the procurer…

There’s a workshop in October in St Petersburg. That’s the chance »»

In August we’ll have another beauty in the old centre of Dresden – White Fortress II. Blind Rain.

In September a big improvisation at the wine festival in Radebeul near Dresden; the wine festival!!.

Independently and in parallel, Lena Imamova and Kolya Zapolskikh are working on a book of my short stories, ‘Back to the Sun’. And Makhina Dzhuraeva and Pavel Alekhin are busy in the museum and libraries of Mikhail Chemiakin at his mansion in France, growing cleverer every day under Mikhail’s eagle eye.

And I’m tormenting myself in Spain with the screenplay of the film ‘DOPPIO’.

Let’s know each other!

Anton

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Elena Yarovaya, Elena Imamova, D. Pandurski

10 days in June

• June 8th ISLANDS
• June 9th ISLANDS
• June 10th Filming for «Viking» (feature), director A. Kravchuk
• June 11th AVIA at the street parade
• June 12th «Midnight Balance»
• June 15th AVIA in concert
• June 17th Makhina Dzhuraeva performs with Elena Kaufman

These two weeks reminded me of DEREVO’s beginnings.

Working continuously for 24 hours at the limit of your strengths, you stop being conscious of any other world but your own. And thus it becomes easy to be creative!

No, “easy” is the wrong word.

At the peak of tiredness all the most crazy ideas become natural, the place begins to draw people in like a magnet, a church-like seriousness builds, a whirlpool of power…

And then the great moment comes when the actors and dancers on stage cease to look like “performers”. They are living it.

It stops being “just” a Theatre.

Elena Yarovaya
Makhina Dzhuraeva
Anna Budanova
Gleb Alekhin
Ivan Nevzorov
Lida Kopina
Liza Polyanskaya
Nikolay Zapolskih
Dmitry Krivochurov
Dasha Fedotova
Anna Bogodist
Elena Imamova
Nikolay Khamov
Igor Fomin
Grisha Shmidko
Sasha Gromyko

Thank you!

Anton Adasinsky

and folliwing was the ONCE… in Poland, we’re heading to Italy with MEPHISTO WALTZ soon and AVIA is going to play a big concert at the Open Cinema Festival in St Petersburg

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

Text: Anton Adasinskiy
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Valeria Erza, Olga Arefieva

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

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Judit Horvath, Igor Anosov, Sylvio Dittrich, Janos Posztos

Nikolay Gusev
is eternal
is strong
is clever
Nikolay Gusev is a musician.

I saw him puzzled just once, on April the 8th,
When I told him that the dancers rehearse night & day.
They know the duration of each track (4 min 26 sec, for example)
And the tempo (metronome at 120 or 86)
But no one listened to the songs. I forbade them.

“They know you, Kolya, they know the AVIA and they trust me. They will hear your music for the first time during the show.”
And so they did, and performed wonderfully!
My experiment was a success.
Danke,
Anton

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Igor Anosov, Elena Yarovaya

Hello to you, Gods!
I’m writing with a big “G”, hoping that you’re not snorting offended and that you’ll read it to the end.
Greetings to all of you!
To the sly and bearded, to the bald and invisible, to the painted and gilded, to those of clay or wood, to the unspeakable.
Did I forget someone?
Oh.. there was another one of Sun Ra descendants, born in a joint.

As I can see you’re working hard and diligently.
Wars and more wars, deaths, hunger…
And those are not wars because of princesses or fields or land.  Rather because of yourselves, my dears.

But you’ll have no success after all…
You’d better meet somewhere up in your clouds to measure your strengths or the lengths of your tongues..

And we shall keep making people happy. You cannot stop us!

I’ll outlive you!
And don’t you dare to lay the blame for the miseries of humankind on the Devil!

“The devil’s role has been greatly exaggerated”, Alexander Sokurov

I’ll outlive you, you cardboard figures…

Happy New Year, people!
Go on, do your business!
You were born to be happy!
So be happy!

Anton Adasinsky
DEREVO group

post scriptum

I’ve been asked about it many times…
But didn’t want to answer.
Now I’ll say:
While working on the Faust filmset I’ve been through many things.
Every day some “signs”, “encounters”, “visions”…

I thought I couldn’t cope with it.
However, the Old Pulteney and Morton Feldman were of great help.

Some time later the sensations subsided. But mirrors and the sound of the wind still can get on my nerves…

Therefore I’m writing in the first person.
Though in the meantime I’m not quite sure of it.

“ONCE…” final bows have been filmed on 28 Dec. 2013 at the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden

Camera: Makhina Dzhuraeva
On stage: Anton Adasinsky, Elena Yarovaya, Tatyana Khabarova, Oleg Zhukovsky, Pavel Alekhin
Sound: Daniel Williams
Light: Falk Dittrich
Management: Isolde Matkey

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editors: Daniel Williams, David Kemp
Video: Makhina Dzhuraeva

Dear friends!

Slava Polunin has planned and already started possibly the biggest project of the 21st Century, The Tower of Human Foolishness.

I heard him and saw the deed of an Architect, and I’ve got permission to talk on his behalf.

The place, where The Tower of Human Foolishness will stand
Photo: Elena Yarovaya
Click to enlarge

He obtained permission to construct a monument that is bigger than anything built in human history right at his old Mill / Studio near Paris.

Four pillars of 690,000 tons each will raise an 11,720 meter high tower to the sky. This unbelievable landmark is already being constructed.

Its base will consist of circus tents and hooded carts brought here from all over the world, as well as 32 temple buildings: from the log huts of the Old Believers to the Masonic “Khruschev’s concrete panel constructions”. They all, as symbols of the religious mess, will be used as foundations of the tower and will be frozen forever in highly transparent liquid kevlar glass.

The pillars themselves will be constructed of Thermit Aluminium by DuPont so that it can sway back and forth a distance of up to 300 metres at the top.

At the top of the tower a Hand Palm will be constructed, where everyone who made a contribution can curl up and hold a tiny thread for approximately five minutes. That thread will dangle down from the satellite named CHIME which is scheduled for launch in 2014.

The CHIME is connected to a smaller satellite that holds the other end of the thread approximately 500 kilometres above CHIME’s orbit. This far end of the thread is not isolated and serves as an antenna to receive the Unknown.

5 minutes of holding the thread — this is The Very Essential, what the famous Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev described as follows: “Laughter, mysterious laugh is the last thread, connecting a Human being with the Universe. When it’s torn, the cranes will be shouting…”

The project has been approved by the authorities and is now being rolled out.
The only problem is time. According to managers’ calculations construction will take 9 to 15 years. It’s far too long.

However it can be sped up by pumping more money into it, by the involvement of more people, and by the supply of better materials.

Beginning from 20th May, 2009 DEREVO theatre starts the charity trust “The Tower of the Human Foolishness”. Every contributor’s name will be engraved on one of the pillars, for people must know the names of those who deify Foolishness.

You can donate some money to the Trust in the following ways:

1. Bank wire transfer:

   Recipient: Tanztheater DEREVO GbR
   Payment purpose: for “The Tower of Human Foolishness” Trust
   Bank: Dresdner Bank, Dresden
   Account No.: 0132640500
   SWIFT-BIC: DRES DE FF 850
   IBAN: DE87 8508 0000 0132 6405 00

2. You can also use the instant and secure transfer by PayPal
   
   
   
   

Donation amount is not limited.

Every week at DEREVO.org we will update the list of the contributors.

Friends!
Tell everyone, mail everyone! Let’s do it together!!!!

Hurry! We also want to hold the thread…

Anton Adasinsky
29th Degree

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English text editor: Jennifer Williams