RASA

MAISTERNIA PISNI, UKRAINE

6 November, 20:00 h, Place:
National Theatre of Kosova

[«On Sunday morning» - maiden ritual - multilevel art anthropological project]

Actors: Ulyana Gorbachevska, Olena Kostyuk, Natalia Polovynka / Author of the idea, director:Sergey Kovalevych / Musical director: Natalia Polovynka / Costumes: Ulyana Gorbachevska / Polygraphy design: Olena Kostyuk

RASA

Performance within Rasa project: «Sunday, morning...» - a moment of being, when consciousness awakes, dawn, the sun has just risen, time of not-doing, time when the Time is present – NE-DILYA*, holiday. Free and not divided existence of soul, which is sanctified by Eternity. Ritual is always correlated with time. Ukrainian songs of maiden annual ritual, on which the performance is based, came to us in the memory of our body. They did not ask us if we want to sing it, if we understand their unpretentious simplicity, if we are linked to this sacred singing. We already went from the place where these songs were born. Probably we are the penultimate people, who are able to perceive the Knowledge, which goes from the depth of the ages, from the depth of Time itself. In any case nowadays songs have no pragmatic meaning, maybe help us to live. Maybe they an ache of the Earth or our Earth itself, which follows us. There is no narrative plot in the performance. It is a Story of Time, of Tree, of Songs.
The maiden plot is always the same:  She is waiting, He is leaving, the whole life he is going. On Sunday morning it is snowing. And actually the plot is “On Sunday morning… she stood on a footbridge…” Sergiy Kovalevych. The performance is based on the “objective drama” of the person (Grotowski, Gurdziev, Klim).

Within Project Rasa, Maisternia Pisni works on the musical material and movement originating from Ukrainian female rituals, as well as from rituals of the annual cycle, focusing on the role of the women. The members of Maisternia examine some selected songs, deriving from various Ukrainian regions – especially from Vinnica, Poltava and Polesia – in the light of rituals, which the group attempts to find in and through the songs. The next stage of the project consists of the attempts to find an adequate theatrical form for this research. This stage of the work is the search for the “elements of ritual within the stage actions”.

MAISTERNIA PISNI

Works since 1996 as art laboratory, which involves itself in various cultural, art and educational projects. Maisternia pisni  is organized like a medieval guild. Its art activity lies at the intersection of theatre and traditional music. Maisternia pisni  is a traditional view on the world, song and man as a studio of creation, form of self-consciousness – recognizing of his vocation. This is a method of work on the territory of objectlessness. Through work with traditional forms of singing we find clear footprints through the ages to what is personal, unique and dear, what we can hand down to other persons. The traditional song provides access to a primary source, it is a bearer of knowledge, it can teach, cure and change life. We use traditional technologies according to which a singing is a service, singing is an instrument of connection with traditional ideology.“Maisternia Pisni” investigates and realizes the laws of Tradition, principles of its existence, organization, and ritual in the Master - Disciple transfer, in the form of encounter, holyday as a culture accomplishment. This is a new anthropology based on ancient laws and forms of Tradition and it is being realized in the present socio-cultural space and time. Creative work and education appears from the quality of artistic reality – connection with Tradition, knowing they way or bridge between sacred, folk and secular culture and laws of Tradition, professional and human competence. On the private territory of Master there is no division into cultural formats. Because of the Master personality and the territory of Song as workshop, it is through the theatre model as universal form of transformation of the invisible into the visible and a place of meeting of the active representative of reality (performer) with the contemplating witness (audience), art appears again as personal, but not pop-one. http://www.maisternia.com.ua