Indiana Memorial Union Gallery presents a book signing and photography exhibit Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman book by Virlana Tkacz, Sayan Zhambalov & Wanda Phipps with photos by Alexander Khantaev, which recently won the Benjamin Franklin Award Indiana Memorial Union Gallery 900 East 7th St Bloomington, Indiana Friday, September 5, 2003 The evening will feature a talk by Virlana Tkacz, an exhibit of photographs by Alexander Khantaev and a reception. Photography exhbit continues to Sept 29, 2003

Also Thursday 4-6 PM September 4, 2003 Woodburn Hall 205 Indiana University Mongolia Society, Office of International Programs, Dept of Central Eurasian Studies, Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center present: A Lecture and Slideshow by Virlana Tkacz, director of Yara Arts Group and Co-Author of the award-winning Shanar: Dedicaiton of a Buryat Shaman Tkacz will describe the recording of Buryat shaman rituals, the making of her book, and her theatre company's work at La MaMa Expreimental Theatre in New York and in Sibeira where her company has created collaborative work with Buryat artists since 1996. In Eastern Sibeira, near the radiant blue water of Lake Baikal, live the Buryats, an indigenous people little known to the Western world. After seventy years of religious suppression and persecution by the Soviet government they are once more free to pursue their tradtional spiritual practices. Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman in Sibeira is a detailed, intimate account of one of these riutals: the Shanar, in which a shaman first contacts the ancestral spirits and receives power. The officiating shaman, Bayir Rinchinov, invited the authors to attend and record the ritual, allowing the outside world an unprecedented view of this ceremony. The authors of the book Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman in Siberia, Virlana Tkacz, Sayan Zhambalov and Wanda Phipps have been translating Buryat poetry into English since 1996. Their translations have been performed at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre and the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York and were published by Agni Review, Terra Nova, Two Lines and Shaman's Drum. They have received New York State Council on the Arts Translations Grants, as well as the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry Translation Award for their work. Alexander Khantaev's photographs have appeared in numerous publications in Buryatia and he has exhibited with the Union of Photographers of Buryatia. He has had two personal exhibits in New York. Portraits of Siberian Shamans was shown at the Open Space Gallery in Saratoga Springs and at La MaMa Galleria in New York City in the spring of 2001. In April 2002 Mr. Khantaev showed Meetings in Mongolia at the Open Space Gallery in Saratoga Springs and the Permanent Mission of Mongolia to the UN in New York City. Book is available at your local bookstore, from www.amazon.com or Parabola Press For more on book and and its reviews On book presentations in New York at Tibet House , at the New York Public Library, in Kyiv and in Lviv Also see Daniel Macisaac's article in Kyiv Post "Buryat Ritual Captured on Film, in Words"

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