Headlong to the future

We have long become lazy and indifferent to all kinds of political actions using the Maidan as a base. However, GogolFest, which opened there last Saturday, was able to gather an unprecedented number of spectators. Perhaps it was due to the paradoxical nature of the classic’s personality, or to the Multiverse performance by the legendary Spanish theater La Fura dels Baus, that took part in the opening of the Olympics in Barcelona, and the Dakh Center for the Contemporary Arts (CfCA). The project was extensively promoted by the Spanish Embassy in Ukraine.

The grand performance, whose main stage was the heart of Kyiv, was meant by its directors to show the intricate diversity of the Universe in a single composition. The title of the project, “Multiverse,” can be conventionally interpreted as “multiple universes.”

There was a lot of music specially written for the occasion by Micky Espuma and the band DakhaBrakha, stunning light and video effects, a lot of gadgets, and the hard work of nearly one hundred actors.

The event culminated in a tremendous fireworks display in all the colors of rainbow, and the image of Gogol with constantly changing expressions, which soared above the Maidan in the grand finale.

GogolFest as a festival of contemporary arts was born four years ago, just before the celebration of the anniversary of Gogol’s birth. Its masterminded was Vladyslav Troitsky, director of Dakh CfCA, who did a lot to keep the festival’s passion ablaze. It is almost unbelievable that the festival has survived these hard times, without any financial sponsorship from state.

“This year,” said Troitsky on the eve of the opening, “the festival is to be reborn. The baby, conceived in the womb of Arsenal, will come into the world. We hope that the new reality will penetrate its lungs, that they will unfold, and the newborn will cry.

“Perhaps it was a cesarean, but the baby turned out to grab life with both hands, and it continues to develop. Maybe it is not as pretty, plump, and pink, as it should have been — with its own home, family, friends, and godparents. But we thank Arsenal, in whose walls its life began.

“Thank you, Arsenal, for our birth. This year we understood that the very fact of GogolFest’s existence does not depend on anything. It is our choice, our ‘thumbs up’ for life, our will to live. And we accept this uncertainty, because walking into the unknown is at the basis of life.

“Roads and travels await our child. In the times of trial, the road is the only thing that remains. It remains when everything else disappears, and the world falls into chaos.”

The Day after the opening the festival embraced a very diverse program, which will last until September 12. The program includes theater, music, visual arts, literature, and movies.

One of the most powerful parts of the program is modern theater, represented by 17 productions from all over Ukraine. This is especially gratifying, given all the talk about the decay of our national theater.

The theater program was opened by the Lviv-based theater performance Voskresinnia (Resurrection), produced by the theater’s director Yaroslav Fedoryshyn. These street improvisations based on Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard have won more than one prize at the most prestigious theater contests, including the Chekhov festival in Moscow. A tour of 30 countries awaits them.

“Chekhov is a cosmopolitan author. He has double or even triple bottom to his works. In his plays you can send your imagination reeling and talk of the past and present — there is always plenty of material,” says Fedoryshyn of his work. “This play appealed to me because time is as transient as cherry blossoms: life begins with an arrival, and ends with a departure. I wanted to emphasize that the characters of the play, just like people in general, live either in the past, or in the future, and never give a thought to the present.”

Theater lovers will also see a Les Kurbas theater (Lviv) performance of King Lear, directed by Ovliakuli Khodzhakuli. It is an amazing capriccio based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, blending the philosophical wisdom of the East and the artistic expression of the West.

Studio Paris is going to show Yanis Ritsos’ solo performance Treason, the story of the ruin of one family. Oblom off, based on the play by Mykhailo Uharov and directed by Mykola Osypov, which has already won The Gold Crown, tells of everyone’s indifference and inability to listen to, and hear, each other. The Ivano-Frankivsk Theater of Music and Drama will present its own vision of Maria Matios’ Sweet Darusia, directed by Rostyslav Derzhypilsky. In a word, there are things to see.

GogolFest cinemaphiles will be able to see Belarusian animation, from the classic Mykhailo Tumelia, through unknown beginners, to Syniofantom, started by the famous Moscow “paradoxalist” Boris Yukhananov. There will be Marc Mercier’s Instants video program, which studies body movements and sounds. The students of Rodchenko School of Photography will present their graduation project, a full-length video film Samodelkin’s Road.

The program also incorporates lots of surprises from the organizers of contemporary art festivals. The main thing is not to believe everything, but rather remember Hemingway’s words, that the difference between talent and genius and mere hacks is that the former quickly acquire everything that the mankind created in the centuries before them, and then go on, creating their own art.