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
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
This happened in some other world. With this world DEREVO never was connected.
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.
When there are millions of troubled people all around you - you will be troubled. The dream is gone. Just whisky and music.
Desire to vacuum and clean the shoes.
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
with
Anton Adasinsky
Nikolay Gusev
Alexei Rakhov
Victor Vyrvich
Igor Timofeev
Veronica Golubeva
Sasha Harinova
Video and Photography : Nastasia Maslennikova, Eva Kuligina
Sound : Seva Gakkel, Mark Titov
Editing : Nastasia Maslennikova, Eva Kuligina
Production Assistant : Alexandre Senin, Olga Ogneva
Producer : Seva Gakkel
In association with 3MostA Hotel and Erarta Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art
I was quite full of wonder after my brief visit to Moscow to the Lumiere Gallery.
I hadn’t expected that so many people were still able to walk slowly and speak gently, to look into your eyes and even to listen to you without meddling with their iphones right in front of your face. I’m speaking of the visitors to the exhibition and to my gig there.
The exhibition Time of the Bells is a VERY GOOD one. Thank you to Nastya and all other organisers behind the scenes.
Meanwhile the DEREVO studio in Dresden has been turned into a filming location. A motion picture in progress is:
The Middle of White (working title)
Idea: Pavel Semchenko (AKHE)
Director: Pavel Semchenko
Cast: Anton Adasinsky (DEREVO)
Cameraman: Andrey Gladkikh
Assistant: Natalia Krymskaya
Producer: Pavel Semchenko
Big thanks to Elena Yarovaya and Isolde Matkey for their support with the boring administrative tasks.
We will tell nothing yet about the music. That will be a surprise.
Anton
(english text editor: Daniel Williams)
Also the heavy metal performance by DEREVO is nearing:
29 – 31 March 2013 in Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden
Anton Adasinsky performs his song Cat on Accordion from the Album DOPPIO live at Lumiere Centre in Moscow, 9th of March 2013. On stage are Alexandra, Veronika, Anton & Nikolay
I, Anton Adasinsky, am responsible for the news text.
Everyone is hurrying me.
Here, I wrote about my dream of a tunnel.
Daniel told me to stop writing a novel in the first person, people would need some facts, where have we been, where will we be, what have we done…
Here, I wrote about where we’ve been and what’s coming up
Lena Yarovaya told me that everyone knows it anyway and that a flatfish is hiding in the sand by using vibrations.
Here, I wrote about the flatfish, although it pretends to be a maggot there.
I’m tired now.
Just read all that you want. It’s just a troubled week of April.
We were in St.P.
HARLEKIN, MEPHISTO WALTZ, the workshop (there was quite a lot of people, about sixty or so). Then there were four days of dreaming up the DROP in the OCEAN.
Then I flew back to Dresden.
I’m not getting sic easily, you know. I mean any flu, quinsy and so on. But suddenly - bamm! I woke up and realise that I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to go to the theatre. Rather I want to read something by James Fenimore Cooper. And I want a thermometer. It says to me: 38°.
Two days have passed like this. To me it’s just as unusual as reading my words in the press. Unusual but wonderful.
Now after a week in St.P., I have decided to end the story.
I’ve got a friend (yes, you can envy me). His name is Igor Timofeev. He lives on the outskirts of St Petersburg. He has a house, a sauna and twenty-eight guitars.
This place is my cavern. When I can’t cope anymore with hearing somebody else’s heart, I can escape there,into the sauna.
Everything describable just stops there. Words and actions change their meaning or lose it completely. We speak to each other there but subjects are not known to us and they’re not suggested by us.
He had a dream.
The manner, as he told it to me, refers to the special language of the steam room.
“raised on horizon… colour of the sky changed… like it was needed there… but they’re drawing here unnatural and a big piece… I unbuttonned the shirt to meet the punch… twenty seconds are still there… first light then I close my eyes then a sound, and in the sound I understand… stand and wait and then the air blows and it’s twisted… ribbed… I see the great playful movements of an accordion which you can touch with your hands… and the eyes flying towards you and me… do you understand!? I’m flying through the nuclear explosion and to my framework… to my skeleton everything is clean understand?? washed and cleaned and inflatable eyes maybe five meters large and I must turn them somehow…”
Then I could remember the rest of my own dream. I’ve never forgotten it to be honest.
I was running and following Pieretta to the stage. It’s a long tunnel. She’s lighter and faster, I wouldn’t be able to reach her. And suddenly I was not chasing her anymore but simply running, precisely and evenly. It was the run to the stage. I kissed my shoulder while I was running there.
On the opposite wall, there was a big letter “E” and then “A”. I realised that I must remember them, for I was running towards the beginning of these words. It’s not hard. When the letters were over I could put together the words “Heat Mode”. Now I was running directly towards the red glow. It was very easy to run.
We’ve added our dreams. I can’t quite remember what has happened after it. Nastya said something about a butterfly who gives a flower a slap in the face. We reproached her with poeticizing of men’s problems. However, the picture of that night has been completed: a butterfly and the hysterical kiss of a light bulb…
Ode to a one-day fly
The worm lying in a tight cocoon
Your life goes forth unhurried
You see no spring, you’re purposeless.
You’re sure you’re resting here for ever.
It’s so delightful, so silent here.
One year or two
But suddently there’s a coolness cracking in.
Scream, you worm! death is coming
Your shield is crackling and it’s scary. Scary!
The wind has blown away the pieces of the cocoon.
Are you dead? No, alive.
So what is that?
Where’s your house? Where’s the tightness and the dryness?
And the crushing there is again like thunder!
Behind your back two wonderful wings unfolded
And you are flying, you are singing.
Your day is in the sky, exposed to the wind
And to the sun of the world
You have been thinking this is death?
But this is life.
Exactly one day long.
Text: Anton Adasinsky
Photos: Elena Yarovaya, C. Friedlander, Lena Dolmatova, Roman Ekimov
Photo Design: Elena Yarovaya
In May Anton and the Positive Band hope to finish the promised CD “Cat on Accordion”. Meanwhile you can enjoy the new video by Andrey Gladkikh to the song “All Seasons” by Andrey Sizintsev, Nikolay Gusev and Anton Adasinsky.
Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden
21 – 23 April 2011, 20.00
DROP IN THE OCEAN Premiere!
Stage design, costumes, production: DEREVO
Director: Anton Adasinsky
Composer, musical director: Nikolai Gusev
Sound design: Daniel Williams
Light design: Igor Fomin
DEREVO with Elena Yarovaya, Anton Adasinsky, Alexey Merkushev and Oleg Zhukovsky and guests from St. Petersburg – Nikolay Gusev (keyboards), Igor Timofeev (perc., guit), as well as dancers Tatyana Belousova, Nadezhda Lanskaya, Anastasia Ponomareva, Aleksey Lanskoy.
Project manager: Isolde Matkey Costumes: Anne Frumson Props: Andrej Bobylew Assistants: Elena Dolmatova, Ekaterina Lobanova
Technical director: Kai Kaden Production supervisor: Andreas Lorenz Light: Falk Dittrich Stage manager: Steffen Köhler Sound: Helge Petzold, Sandro Schwertner Stage: Peter Tirpitz, Welko Dimitrow
The new production by DEREVO is dedicated to the modern russian folklore and at the same time it’s a nostalgic contribution to the 50th Anniversary of the first space flight of human, as well as to the 50th Anniversary of the city partnership between St. Petersburg and Dresden.
The hero of the journey to the collective past is Petrovich. He could never forget his dreams, in his grey backyard he still tinkers a rocket which will once take him to the outer space…
Host organization: HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts Dresden.
The premiere has been supported by the Culture Foundation of the Free State of Saxony
You wouldn’t remember me probably. It’s St. Petersburg, former Leningrad. I saw you yesterday on the street but was too shy to say hello. Besides, it was just too noisy.
I have heard quite a lot about you. Recently I read a nice interview of yours, some girl dropped it somewhere. Well done. I’m almost envying you.
And I’m looking like some terrible creature. It’s OK for now, when the snow is still there. But in Summer it becomes really awful. I’m old now. And this damn salt they use against the ice… I’m stinking like a foul stockfish. I used to look after myself but I just gave up. Who values it anyway? Old good Petersburger chaps are passing, there’s nobody to talk to in the good Russian. And I don’t really understand those youngsters, we hardly can become friends. They seem to ignore me. They think instead of New York. By the way, the latter called me yesterday. It sounded tired. Though it was trying to save face. You know them, Americans…
And I’m not really fond of travelling anymore. Do you remember as I went on a short trip in 1993 and right away the mushrooms attacked the Leningrad area? I hardly could stop them.
I’m not in the best mood now, you see. I’m looking forward to Victory Day though. I like it when they march on me… it tickles!
Remember as you were leaving and told me to be careful with helping people. You also said something about the dead Teotihuacan, who
said that the Force goes first, then the Priests and then the people. Or have I mixed something up? Could you write me more precisely? It’s really important to me.
This Spring I am hoping to clean myself properly, wash away all this dirt. The snow should be enough but it will be nearly impossible because of the dyke. Maybe I should move away, Anton. What do you think?
When you are here again, just show up. Maybe we can spend some time together sitting on the Naryshkin bastion.
It’s not looking good with my internet access right now. Just write me per Neva river.
best regards,
Yours truly
St. Petersburg
P.S. Many greetings to Berlin
Positive Band
“Vse razoshlis’…”
Lyrics by Arseny Tarkovsky
Anton Adasinsky - music, guitar, vocals
Igor Timofeev - guitar, vocals
Nikolay Gusev - keyboards, vocals
Andrey Sizintsev - percussion, vocals
Viktor Vyrvich - percussion
Alexey Rakhov - percussion, saxophone
I went to the show… or I was taken there to be precise.
A puppet show. A cloth and two puppets hanging. A Boy and a Girl.
7 and a half people in the audience…
tears in my eyes. The world becomes so pure and bright.
On stage, no people smelling of life, no newspapers with murderers.
- Hide quoted text -
Just the cardboard heart, the crumpled silk flower and a small bag of
money (don’t know anymore what for, whether a dowry or ransom…)
Quite an old story. Sound of toy horses and barrel organs. It just
can’t be true.
And at the end the cashier Yershov is hanged at the gallows.
Outside I smoked and blew my nose. Silk, Gypsies and Fandango.
Do you remember? Mommy, mommy, it hurts…
So here’s a song about the small bag of happiness.
Listen to and obey…
Thanksssss…
Anton
===================
Anton Adasinsky - Lyrics, Music, Bass, Vocals
Igor Timofeev - Guitar, Vocals
Nikolay Gusev - Keyboards, Vocals
Andrey Sizintsev - Elektro-Percussion, Vocals
Viktor Virvich - Drums
Alexey Rakhov - Saxophone
Recorded and mixed at Studio “36″ and “Studio Grey”, St. Petersburg, 2009.
Finished on April Fool’s Day.
Camera & cut: Andrey Gladkih
Design: Elena Yarovaya
Photos by David Pokorni, Anna Bogodist, Roman Ekimov, Olga Arefieva, Elena Yarovaya Photo design: Elena Yarovaya English text editor: Jennifer Williams
Another video premiere online! Right on April Fool’s Day 2009 the film by Andrey Gladkih “Adventures of the Golden Egg” has been published on YouTube (High Quality available). This is a first part of the four planned in total:
DEREVO actions in an unusual spaces
Street performances like “A Drum of the Hare Skin”, “Attrazione” etc.
Camera and cut by Andrey Gladkikh Attention! High quality headphones or audio system are recommended for better perception of the sound in the video.
After the short concert series “Vsyo khorosho!” (”Everything is good!”) Anton Adasinsky and the lads decided to carry on with the project. After all it goes so well!
In February or March 2009 there will be recorded the first 4 tracks of the new album:
“Korotkaya” (A Short One)
“Dengi” (Money)
“Zvezda” (The Star)
“Ego glaza” (His Eyes)
Please do not repost this video on YouTube, Facebook or any similar web-sites. Just give a links on this page. (Yes, we do have an offician DEREVO channel on YouTube »)
No tickets from Moscow to St. Petersburg. None and never.
Bought myself a place in the conductor’s compartment.
In Tver two young-and-wonderful boarded.
They were sleeping with their heads against the glass in the corridor. I invited them to join me and waited outside while they prepared a bunk.
The girl came out and asked, laughing:
“Do we disturb you?”
“No”, I said.
“Who are you, actually?” – she asked.
I said, “I’m one of the train security,” (bald, black jacket – so she couldn’t doubt it).
“Excuse us, if we get noisy.”
“No worries,” said I, “sing, laugh… should I wait in the corridor?”
“Well, you’ll probably have to wait a long time. He’s like a Roman law, you know, indistinct and very slow.”
We laughed very loud… The guy peeked out.
“I’m coming. I’m running. I’m already there!” she said to him.
I slept quite honest-minded and dreamed of a bi-directional flow of people.
In the morning she catches me up on the platform, laughing again:
“But you’re not from the security.”
“Security?”
“I know you.”
“I know.”
“Do you have echolalia?”
“Echolalia.”
She’s laughing again. Now the chap is here: “Baby, leave him alone!”
Just outside of the train station she turns to me again:
“Did you sleep well?”
“Fine. Rome, Sparta, a kid falling down the abyss; he was too lightweight, not warrior-like.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Anton, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So what do you guard there?”
“The secret of Caipirinha.”
And I head for a taxi. I want to dance.
On June 11 and 12 I was on stage with a guitar in my hands and a microphone at my throat. Friendly musicians around me. We called the concert “Vsyo Khorosho!” – “Everything is fine!”
Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: Jennifer Williams
Photo: Anna Bogodist, Olga Arefieva, Alexandra Krivolutskaya
Photo design: Elena Yarovaya
Рома Дубинников (музыка к спектаклям «Всадник», «Однажды…». «Острова» и много ещё всего)
Николай Гусев («АВИА»)
Алексей Рахов («АВИА»)
Игорь Тимофеев - гитара, перкуссия
Андрей Сизинцев (музыка к фильму «Юг. Граница», спектаклю «LA DIVINA COMMEDIA»)
СтереоЗольдат - акции DEREVO и первая пластинка «Асфальт» с Антоном Адасинским Ольга Арефьева
и другие
.jpg "Nikolay Gusev. Photo - Olga Arefieva")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Igor Ignatyev. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Olga Arefieva")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Dmitry Tyulpanov, Tatyana Khabarova. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Vsyo Khorosho Concert. Photo - Olga Arefieva")
.jpg "Vsyo Khorosho Concert. Photo - Anna Bogodist")
.jpg "Vsyo Khorosho Concert. Photo - Alexandra Krivolutskaya")
.jpg "Vsyo Khorosho Concert. Photo - Alexandra Krivolutskaya")
.jpg "Vsyo Khorosho Concert. Photo - Alexandra Krivolutskaya")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky. Photo - Alexandra Krivolutskaya")
.jpg "Anton Adasinsky, Igor Ignatyev, Olga Arefieva. Photo - Alexandra Krivolutskaya")
