Phallocycle Before Curtain Call

The program of the Kyiv Music Fest Thirteenth International Festival proved to be highly diverse. It featured premiers and new names, and thus proved the existence of a rich and varied school of composers in Ukraine with Valentyn Sylvestrov, Yevhen Stankovych, and Myroslav Skoryk at the helm. Less evident, however, is the fact that the national musical realm has produced an array of brilliant, agile, and gifted young experimentalists. Most memorable in this respect was the concert of modern chamber music at the Kyiv House of Scholars. Works by composers from Odesa and Kyiv were performed, with plays by Olena Tomlienova, Liudmyla Samodayeva, Carmella Tsepkolenko, Yulia Homelska (a great number of talented ladies is another interesting feature of our stage), and Hennady Sasko deserving a special mention. The highlight of the program, its eccentric, albeit quite logical, conclusion, was the premiere of the Phallocycle; a new enfant terrible of the Kyiv avant-guard Serhiy Zazhytko. A combination of unrestricted fantasy bordering on hooliganism with a sublime sense of form so typical of Zazhytko has acquired a superior quality in his latest opus. Unexpected twists in the play kept the audience guessing and at the same time were consistent with the rhythm of the unraveling story. The percussionist (Oleh Hrabovliak) was the first to appear onstage to elicit sounds from the most unexpected objects, ranging from screws to metal sheets. A dancer in the white (Olha Kebas) was desperately wriggling in the middle of the stage, imitating a flower of innocence. Then a trio of barefoot lads (Danylo Pertsov, Oleksandr Kokhanovsky, Serhiy Okhrimchuk) made their entrance, using corrugated hoses from a vacuum cleaner as makeshift wind instruments. Like giant bumblebees they circled around the snow-white “flower”, closing in on her. The percussionist was stamping his feet and pitching metal objects in a wild frenzy. A shattering roar of the bullhorn (Dmytro Kolomiyets) came from backstage, adding more suspense to the action. Phallocycle is arguably the best name for this orgy of sound and movement so painstakingly orchestrated and built on the inside. It culminated in the triumph of the “flower” over the obnoxious “bumblebees” and a deafening silence. The short audio-visual performance seemed to have captivated even the most conservative part of the audience. Only one thing is regrettable, namely Kyiv’s utter lack of receptivity to this bright and talented eccentricity. Were Zazhytko, Pertsov, and Kohanovsky (incidentally, the last two are also very interesting composers) to live somewhere in Paris in the Dadaistic year 1920, they would have been long since immortalized in all arts encyclopedias...