10th GogolFest ends in Kyiv

The festival’s closing weekend proved especially eventful. On Friday, Stage 6 hosted Javier Martin’s “Oximorica.” The choreographer is known for his inimitable dancing scenes and matching settings. Since 2004, he has made over 30 stage productions, including “Control,” “El Ansia” (The Hunger), “El Antiedipo o el Homunculo” (Anti-Oedipus and Homunculus), and “El Estado Crudo” (The Raw State). In Kyiv, he staged “Symptoma” to the brilliant Ukrainian-born composer Oleg Karavaychuk’s music.

Choreography was the closing festival’s days’ watchword. Dovzhenko Center hosted the Totem Dance Group’s Rozmaittia (Diversity), starring the fantastic percussionist Jose Garcia, flutist Felicia van den End, and eight dancers. The VDNH Concert Hall (on the premises of the former Soviet Exhibition of Economic Achievements, currently used for a variety of business and cultural projects, still popularly known for its acronym, VDNH) premiered Vlad Troitskyi’s pop opera-ballet “Kovcheh” (The Ark), based on the Song of Songs, staged by the noted Argentinean-British choreographer Oscar Chacon, with music courtesy of Nova Opera. This project was the closing part of Vlad Troitskyi’s biblical trilogy (e.g., “Job” and “Babel”).

Terabak de Kyiv, a joint Ukrainian Dakh Daughters Freak Cabaret and Le Monfort Theatre, was the festival’s most scenic closing show. The Daughters sang their well known and loved songs (with some lyrics in French) while the circus artists did their numbers. It was then the melancholic Ukrainian romance “I Changed My Hairdo and Boyfriend” turned into a short love story, with a circus athlete flying all over a huge trampoline, riding a unicycle, and with the line “What do you think you’re doing” turning into a surrealistic burlesque. Then there was the intermission with some of the cast acting as card sharps but willingly revealing their secrets. The audience loved it. All told, the scenario was nothing new, with good old tricks put together, but the result was as though one were watching something really new, and this was especially newness for the French...

This GogolFest marks the project’s 10th anniversary. Traditionally, it is held on different premises, in a different city each year. Vlad Troitskyi is its founding father and stage director. He is known to have told his close friends, off the record, that he is sick and tired of it, adding that it is anything but gratifying, even less rewarding. There are few shows in Ukraine marked by such taste and creativity. Let’s hope that GogolFest will live a hundred years.