28 Nov 2002

Buryat ritual captured on film, in words
(Photo courtesy of Ra Gallery)

Shaman Bayir Rinchinov ties power flags to a birch tree in a photograph by Alexander Khantsev. The photo is featured in the "Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman" book and exhibition.

Buryat ritual captured on film, in words

By Daniel MacIsaac, Kyiv Post Staff Writer

Ukraine isn’t the only former Soviet republic experiencing a religious revival these days. A new exhibition opening Nov. 29 at Kyiv’s Ra Gallery celebrates the spirit and spirituality of the Buryat people of eastern Siberia.


Titled “Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman,” the exhibition includes a presentation of the book (of the same name) by American Virlana Tkacz, as well as a collection of 30 photographs by Buryat photographer Alexander Khantaev.


“The proposal was interesting for Ra because a book presentation combined with photo illustrations is something new for us,” gallery owner Andry Trylisky said.


The idea for the exhibition came to the gallery courtesy of Tkacz, a Fullbright scholar who is currently teaching at the Kyiv Theater Institute. As a theater director and co-founder of the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the La MaMa Experimental Theater in New York, she’s spent a good deal of time since 1997 both in her ancestral Ukraine and in the Buryat autonomous region of Russia, near Lake Baikal.


“Yara has created original theater pieces based on the East – a term that includes both Eastern Europe as well as Siberia,” Tkacz said. “And while we take material from the East rather than present it through a single perspective, we create pieces that speak universally.”


Tkacz’s initial interest in Buryat culture was theater, but she quickly saw a wealth of possibilities for other forms of artistic expression. Inquiries into traditional Buryat songs, music and stories first led Tkacz to interview, record, photograph and film a number of Buryat elders. One project led to the next, and the Yara group became at least as well known for its translations of Buryat poetry as for its theater pieces.


Tkacz said the idea for the “Shanar” book came through an invitation from Shaman Bayir Rinchinov in the summer of 2000 to attend the dedication (or initiation) ceremony of a disciple named Volodya Zhaltsapov. Tkacz and two other foreigners were allowed to witness, chronicle and participate in the five-day ritual, which centered around a Mongolian-style “yurt” hut on the grass-covered plains of Buryat Aga, east of Lake Baikal. Tkacz described the experience as moving.


“I’ve seen a lot of great acting and this was not acting; this was something well beyond that, with the ritual calling down the spirits,” Tkacz said. “It wasn’t like doing math, when you know what’s going to happen at the end. Here, the new shaman couldn’t make contact with the spirits for a very long time. The book is the dramatic story of that struggle.”


In the same way that Yara incorporates Buryat artists into its productions, Tkacz said Buryat photographer Alexander Khantaev was chosen to shoot the “Shanar” project. The work of the Irkutsk-born photographer has appeared in both Buryatia and Moscow, and he’s staged exhibitions in New York as well. His bright, dramatic and moving photos – interspersed in the English-language book along with poems, songs and personal accounts of the participants in the ceremony – capture both the solemnity and excitement of the initiation ritual.


Both Tkacz and Khantaev will be on hand at Ra for the five days of the exhibition. The Nov. 29 opening is set to include trilingual readings from the book – in English, Ukrainian and Buryat – as well as traditional Buryat music.


Recently published by Parabola Press, “Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman” is available on Amazon.com. More information is also available on the Yara Web site at www.brama.com/yara.

 

Shanar: Dedication Ritual of
a Buryat Shaman
Opening: Nov. 29, 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition: Nov. 29-Dec. 3.

Ra Gallery
32 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho.
Tel: 235-3619.
Open: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. daily.