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Text Box: Photos of the Chonrobyl Songs Project by Virlana Tkacz

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Text Box: Winter began with an ancient winter ritual song. Koliada is a winter ritual that now coincides with Christmas, but is much older in origin and symbolism. Some say the winter song singers are the ancestors who descend to earth during the winter solstice and sing magical incantations to each member of the family. Led by a fiddler, the winter singers stand outside the house and sing: “Is the master of this house home? Set the table, for three guests from the heavens are coming to visit you…” Then the men sing a church Christmas carol. As the winter freeze loosens its grip, young women gather on a hill to call out spring: “Oh Lord, let spring begin! Hey!” Their calls resound from village to village. Spring warmth arrives with lightning storms, rushing waters, and the pale green of new grass. The rites of spring include round dances, and a dance that traces a meandering pattern. “A bolt of lightning flies through the village and strikes down a young man. Oh Lele, the spirit of spring, water rushes around.” Spring in Chornobyl was interrupted on April 26, 1986. This moment was marked in the show with an excerpt from “May” by Natalka Bilotserkivets, read by Maria Sonevytsky in the original and by Willa Roberts in a translation by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Traditionally, later in the spring once the wheat fields start to sprout, the women of the village would lead the rusalki, dangerous female spirits, out of the village and the fields back into the rivers and forests. “I will lead the

Text Box: rusalki to the river’s ford, and then I’ll return home alone.” And “I’ll strike my palms till they ache…I’ll clap so that the rusalki hear and depart.” As the harvest began, the women would sing their hearts out in the fields. Fragments from field songs: “I stayed up all night waiting for my beloved.” “Don’t cry, girl. I’m getting married, but not to you.” “Beloved, don’t be angry, don’t tear the sheets. Why won’t you look at me or our children?” “Oh Lord, help us make it from this end of the field to the other.” Weddings were usually held in the fall after the harvest. During the wedding ritual the matrons undo the bride’s braids and roll her hair up under a kerchief, worn by all married women. The maids fight them off in a set of ritual songs and bemoan the loss of a friend. Matrons: “Where is the mother, who will have us take the ribbons from the hair of such a young bride?” Maids: “That snake pulled my hair, sisters shed tears.” “Girls, take up sticks and defend my long braids.” Matrons: “We’ve done what we set out to do: we transformed a girl into a young woman.” “May you be as pure as water. May you be as rich as the land.” Lyrical songs were interspersed throughout the seasons including this one during the wedding: “The grass rustles as a girl lies with a boy, lifting her hand to embrace him… What a stupid girl, she gave her love to a boy, then had to be married off to a widower.” It was

Text Box: followed by a lullaby sang by a proud grandma rocking the baby: The yellowing tree turned into a snowy road. Winter had once more arrived with its Koliada. “Is the master of this house home? Set the table, for three guests from the heavens are coming to visit you…” Yara’s director Virlana Tkacz staged the movements and created the projections with video artist Mikhail Shraga for the performance. These included stunning photographs from Chornobyl villages by Jim Krantz, a photographer from Chicago. A Lucie Awards winner, Mr. Krantz had recently published his book Homage: Remembering Chernobyl that included photographs from 2009 and 2010 of the forgotten inhabitants of Chornobyl’s Forbidden Zone. Also included were photographs by Mykola Seminoh of the National Research Center for Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technological Disaster. In the first days of December 2011 Hillka Ensemble performed Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World at the Ukrainian Museum in New York, Princeton University, the Ethical Society of Washington DC and Crossroads Music in Philadelphia. For their performances at the Ukrainian Museum Ensemble Hilka was joined by singers Oksana Fedorko, Alexandra Myrna, Julia Pivtorak and Odarka Polanskyj. The group also performed excerpts of the show at Golden Festival in January and will appear in Yara’s Re-Imagine: Ourselves Festival at the Ukrainian Institute 2 East 79 Street at Fifth Avenue in New York January 28 at 8PM