2023-08-03 23:48:34
Leonid Fedorov, the leader of the Auktyon rock group, who celebrated his 60th birthday this year, continues to look for new ways in music and related arts. And not only with “Auktyon”, the soul and voice of which he has been performing for over 30 years. First of all, these far-reaching searches are embodied in numerous solo albums and collaborations. On August 9, Moscow’s Oktyabr cinema will host the only screening and public discussion of the ballet film Ashera, created by Fedorov together with Gothenburg-based choreographer Anna Ozerskaya.
The hour-long film is based on the album of the same name, recorded by Fedorov with Israeli musician Igor Krutogolov in 2020 in self-isolation in Israel. These are 10 hard, with elements of trip-hop and even industrial tracks, based on the poem (or poetic cycle) of the Israeli culturologist, guide and poet Mikhail Korol “Songs of the felled Ashera”. This word, more familiar to us in the vowels “Astarte” and “Ishtar”, is the name of the Middle Eastern pagan goddess of fertility, whose cult, as one can easily imagine, was accompanied by rites and crowded ceremonies, which, following the Christian tradition, should not hesitate to call orgies.
However, the content of the poem lies precisely in the fact that Ashera, in nine energetic monologues, renounces her former lovers – the Phoenician, Ugaritic, Babylonian and Canaanite gods. But she does this for a reason, but in the name of the only Jewish god, whose unpronounceable name is replaced by a four-letter abbreviation: “And I love the god Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey! That’s when my trachea flutters…”
But the tragedy of the goddess is that in monotheism, unlike pagan cults, no divine spouses are allowed – and choosing Yahweh, Astarte consciously chooses self-disappearance. As can be seen even from the above lines, the poem on an ancient mythological plot is extremely far from the stylizations “in the biblical style”. But nevertheless, according to the assurances of the King himself, she met with the ardent approval of a deep connoisseur of the Bible and an outstanding translator, the poet Anri Volokhonsky.
Volokhonsky himself translated the psalms of David, and Fedorov recorded the album “Psalms” (2016) for these translations, which is also very far from church canons. But this time it was not limited to the next album. Fedorov decided to make a ballet out of this. According to him, because “to be honest, the text is not so simple.”
But Fedorov, as usual, is a little understated. The point is not only that the complex polystylistic texts, in which the archaic mentality is expressed through the latest vernacular, will become clearer if you dance to them (which is not obvious). But also in the fact that Anna, the daughter of Dmitry Ozersky, Fedorov’s constant partner and co-author in Auktyon, has grown into a professional dancer, working in the Dance Company at the Gothenburg Opera since 2015. Which, according to Anna herself, has nothing to do with classical ballet.
Initially, it was about a “regular” choreographic performance that would be presented on stage. But since the implementation of the idea fell on the quarantine year 2020, it was transformed into a ballet film. It was shot by Anna herself among the exotic scenery and deserted landscapes of northern Sweden, indistinguishable on film from the Canaanite deserts. In it, for an hour, the only heroine – Ashera (Sabina Grunendijk) uses plastic means of expressive modern dance to “show things off” with 11 partners representing pagan gods. All dancers are of different origins, from Slavic to Japanese, but all work or have worked with Anna in Gothenburg. That provided, on the one hand, a variety of types and richness of texture, on the other hand, mutual understanding.
However, Anna Ozerskaya emphasizes that she did not set herself and her artists the task of “dancing the text or somehow arranging and serving the music.” According to her, when putting on this or that number, sometimes they simply turned off the music and composed something already without it – “having been fed with a special energy.”
Discussions about energy are always difficult to formalize, especially when it comes to the energy of stories three thousand years ago. Understanding this, the creators of this unusual syncretic work agreed to discuss it personally. Fedorov, an admirer of Giotto and the Oberiuts, does not like public performances outside of concerts. So the public talk, where he will appear not as the leader of a legendary rock band, but as a modern artist interpreting ancient legends, is an event as unique as the screening of the Swedish-Canaanite Ashera.
#Ashera #dance #Astarte #Vedomosti