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

One more prize for DEREVO – the Broadway Baby’s Bobby „goes to Mephisto Waltz at Assembly Roxy for their high production values and stunning design“.

Thank you to all who contributed to the perfection of the show!

Lena Yarovaya – stage design
Daniel Williams – sound
Igor Fomin – light
Anna Frumson – costumes
Andrey Bobylev – sunflowers
Max Isaev – chalk stripes which turned to footprints leading up to the sky

Dancers on stage: Nastya, Pavel, Makhina, Anna, Anton

And thank you to all who came to see MEPHISTO WALTZ in Edinburgh!

Nach dem Fringe ist vor dem Fringe!

Anton

From left to right/top to bottom: Pavel, Makhina, Anna, Nastya, Igor, Daniel, Anna, Anton. Photo Credit: Larry Bartfleet

Click to open it as PDF »

Thank you Donald Hutera & The Times

Some further reviews of MEPHISTO WALTZ in Edinburgh:

• From Total Theatre by Dorothy Max Prior »
• “A Mephisto-fying Waltz” by Emma-Jane Denly from Broadway Baby »
• “Russian Winter in August” by Tramway Yount Critics »
• Fantastically detailed review ““Live with a rainbow in your heart” by Chloe Henderson at ishotamandapalmer blog »

Thanks to all authors for seeing and reviewing MEPHISTO WALTZ.

The Scarecrow stood on the edge of the field. Replacement for his rusty tin-cans was well overdue.

I can wait.

Hello everybody!

In just one week DEREVO starts the new series of shows, where?
Yes, of course in Edinburgh. For the eighth time.

Probably there’s no need anymore. We’ve got all the main prizes. Everyone knows us here, except maybe the first wife of the Mayor, ‘cos she lives on Malta.

But the year without the Fringe seems to be incomplete. The Fringe is a running track in time. Backwards. Back to the honest days.

The show’s temper can be hardened by this. Harden, let down, bend and forge again, cling-clang… in our aprons, merrily…

Yes, there’s a risk that the „horseshoe“ of the show breaks. It may happen. That’s why it’s the Fringe.

MEPHISTO WALTZ becomes a joyous performance. I still couldn’t write a proper description text for it. I tried. I know I can do it. But it just doesn’t need any texts.

Anton.

DEREVO has brilliantly performed MEPHISTO WALTZ last year at the OEROL.

But I was somehow uneasy. Not quite settled. Not entirely.

This is the island of DEREVO.

Every blade of grass knows us here.

But the guys didn’t go through that all yet.

They’ve got it delivered directly, the audience, the success.

MEPHISTO WALTZ is a show. Precise and ready-made body.

So now, one year later, they have to attend some other classes: the Street and the Body.

Just as we were doing it then.

In the sunlight and with no music playing back. Same costumes, same asphalt, same wind and a sand…

It just must be.

The steps of a big staircase should not be skipped.

This is a way of learning. I think about it rather often lately.

Anton

The News!

The Noah’s Ark project is ready!

One and a half months of work: St Petersburg, Moscow, Potsdam, Dresden, Leipzig.

I heartily congratulate our students Nastya Ponomareva, Pavel Alekhin (aka Gleb Sinichkin), Makhina Dzhuraeva. This is the first show entirely created by themselves.

And Alexey Lanskoy evolved no less than into DEREVO’s technical manager.

And Nastya could also be seen in HARLEKIN in the main part of Pieretta and The Devoted Monkey at the Golden Mask Festival. Really not bad for just two years working with DEREVO…

About Oleg Zhukovsky you could read in the previous news. And if you could see Lena just now…..

Well, and now to the performances coming up.

In Poland – Nastya Ponomareva with her solo project Lunis.

Our dearest OEROL Festival on Terschelling island comes next. DEREVO School On Wheels will be improvising throughout ten days on an entire island day and night.

And then the wonderful festival and funfair Schaubudensommer in Dresden, with its tents and barkers… just like it was centuries ago.

And Edinburgh Fringe with MEPHISTO WALTZ. Apparently we can’t live without that adrenaline rush. Anna Bogodist has prepared a large scale invasion of Scotland with the „Russians in Roxy“ Programme.

So, that’s it. I don’t think I’ve ever wrote such a dry and plotless piece of news. Maybe I should attach a passport photo to it and the vase at the window with the half of a tomcat.

Anton.

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: Daniel Williams
Photo: Natalya Krymskaya, Roman Ekimov, Alexey Kostromin

Vote for Anton @Sobaka.ru Top50 Awards [RU] » 

NOW in the PAST »»

DEREVO.org web-master

Back in 1989 DEREVO was performing at OEROL for the very first time!

Aaaaah! Is it really so long ago???

22 years ago this Island made a new hardly noticeable companion to world re-knowned DEREVO theatre company.

Right there in the dunes, under the sky, on the endless sands, in the roaring wind and surf, there the unique principles of DEREVO’s dance have been elaborated. And they mean the mastering of huge spaces, laconic moves, purity of senses, precision in colours of the costumes and props, live music of nature…

Our improvisations here could be just four hours long, as well as nine days and nights without break, like in the „Adventures of the Golden Egg“.

And now at the thirtieth (!) anniversary OEROL Festival, on top of the hill, in an endless wind, blowing all the waste out of your mind and body, here DEREVO performs Mephisto Waltz.

No photograph could possibly convey the power of this place…
But still… here are some photo-visions…

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: Daniel Williams
Photos: Anna Bogodist, Elena Yarovaya
Photo design: Elena Yarovaya

See also one of the first online photo projects at DEREVO.org dedicated to the Island of Terschelling - Wind & Water »

The photographs from the Wind & Water are also available as a printed album DEREVO vol. 1 here »

Based on the images connected with the production MEPHISTO WALTZ in Hellerau, Dresden, in December 2010

Photos and Animation by Elena Dolmatova
Music/Sounds by Daniel Williams
Sound design by Elena Dolmatova

See also: “THANK YOU!!!” »

We’re now working on MEPHISTO WALTZ.

The idea came to me during the filming of the «Faust» by A. Sokurov

The forced immobility and the total ban even for my daily excercises (to keep the character’s spirit intact) were exhausting.

Now this is a kind of dance version of the film coming up as «revenge».

Though it’s quite unclear where the scarecrow comes from. But nobody’s bewildered by that at DEREVO.

Harlekin’s life is jolly and wondrous!

We were in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, St. Petersburg. Now we’re travelling to Serbia, then Budapest, then to…. And yes, the book about Me-Harlekin is available now. You can see it here:

It’s like a libretto or a manual.

And last but not least: my notion entitled „Motorway – the moles’ tomb“ has been approved for consideration by the Greens. By boring six cm wide holes at two meter intervals on all roads passing a wood moles can reach the surface freely. Too many of them get stuck under the asphalt only to find death!

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: Daniel Williams
Photos: Anton Adasinskiy, Elena Yarovaya
Photo design: Elena Yarovaya

After the workshop at Stanford one of the students offered to bring me to the hotel in San Francisco.

It’s about 40 minutes travel. In the car he asked me if I’ve seen the Redwood. Not if I’ve been there but if I’ve seen it. I said that I’m too tired. He suddenly flushed red and said that I’ve just got to go there. So he turned off the highway. Quite unexpectedly stubborn for an American…

I rarely visit any woods. I’m always sad there and it is somehow cramped. But the Redwood, it’s something entirely different. They are also known as Mammoth trees. We were walking somewhere rather fast and he spoke something looking at his feet. He said nothing new, nothing new could I hear but something unusual was going on.

All his thoughts about technology development, about the destiny of the Father of Internet seemed to me rather flat for a Stanford student.

He tried to pull me into discussion. I suspected an attempt to show off a little bit.

“Everyone I know in Stanford wants to change the world.” I answered that I really want to keep the world as it is, so we’re on different paths. We laughed.

He brought me to a cut of a tree trunk and I couldn’t believe my eyes: the tree must have been around 2500 years old! And some of the annual rings were marked and signed.

The student went on talking and I was reading… 1347, Europe’s Black Death… “We’ve got a club, called The Cell. There are really selected brains. We try to analyze the moment when inventions or discoveries or rather presentiments of an invention can be captured by other people. Or even more precisely when some kind of an invention’s carrier frequency emerges and is available for scanning, since at that very moment… how should I explain it…” – 1492, Columbus arrives to the New World – “ … it’s not a stealing, it’s much more complex… best of the best are working here” – hmm, if it’s allowed to smoke a cigarette here in the woods… – “…we’re moving the world here. And another moment which is particularly exciting is when an invention becomes destructive and may come into unfriendly hands…” – Declaration of Independence is signed, 1776 – “another project I’m working on at The Cell is a software development, the software invoking an enmity to other software in one’s mind… a sort of shady copy of the original software but actually quite sophisticated… ” – Gold Rush, 1848 – “one of the tasks is an integration of elements which irritate a human biosystem via PC and arouse a consequent rejection, an inability to perceive information without additional effort…”

At the hotel’s doors he said to me that he’s always talking that much in the Wood because he hears the voices of the Redwood if he’s silent.

“And what do the voices say?”
“Pretty much the same but quite understandable and clear, and just like it happened yesterday. It’s dangerous. Thank you once again for your Harlequin. Have a good night.”

The Black Dance from the previous news is the first outline of the new DEREVO project MEPHISTO WALTZ. Scenic design by Maxim Isaev (AKHE). In May Lena, Tanya, Alisa and Anton presented this work at the Meta Theatre of Mikhail Chemiakin in France.

The main character of the performance was born there – The Scarecrow (you will not see him on any photo).

Text: Anton Adasinskiy
English text editor: Jennifer Williams
Photo: Elena Yarovaya, Maxim Isaev, Mikhail Chemiakin
Photo design: Elena Yarovaya

MEPHISTO WALTZ will be the new performance by DEREVO. First previews are available to the public during the open rehearsal in the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden and the appearance in the Mihail Chemiakin’s Meta-Theatre at his house in France.

See tour plan for exact dates »