DATELINE NEW YORK: Behind the scenes for Easter (04/27/97)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Behind the scenes for Easter

by Helen Smindak

Today, Easter Sunday is being observed reverentially in Ukraine and many Ukrainian churches in the diaspora, including Ukrainian churches in New York. At every Resurrection service, flickering candlelight is reflected in holy icons, the fragrance of incense wafts over worshippers, and choral responses dialogue with the chanting of priests as they officiate in embroidered vestments.

The blessing of Easter baskets and the performance of children's circle dances outside the church repeat spring rituals that have been passed down through centuries.

To preview some of the aspects of Easter as observed by Ukrainians who follow the old-style calendar, Dateline visited St. George Academy in the East Village, where students were rehearsing hahilky; the Mayana Gallery, to watch a performance of spring songs and dances; and the Kurowycky Meat Products store, for a first-hand view of the preparation and smoking of spicy-flavored kovbasa sausages so integral to Easter baskets and the Ukrainian Easter breakfast.

Bow to each other

"Slowly, slowly. Bow to each other, bow to each other. Now hold hands. Left and right." Raising her voice above the sound of taped music and marching feet, Daria Genza called out instructions to some 80 students of St. George School as they moved through formations in the gymnasium. From kindergartners to eighth-graders, ranging from 4 to 14 years of age, they had been practicing for several weeks under Mrs. Genza's guidance and were ready to strut their stuff outside St. George's Ukrainian Catholic Church on Easter Sunday.

With school principal Sister Gabriela assisting, Mrs. Genza directed the students for more than two hours as they moved through circle dances known as "hahilky" - ritual spring dances and games once believed to serve a magical function by enticing spring and chasing winter away. Walking lyrically, they formed a chain, shaped a tightly wound flower design, then unwound the formation, clapped and waved their hands. Facing each other in pairs, hands tightly clasped, they created a long bridge so that 5-year-old Adriana Magun and 4-year-old Volodymyr Goloborodko could walk across their arms as they re-enacted the role of the "zhuchok," the beatle that is so welcome in Ukrainian gardens.

There were various movements and sounds - calling the soloveyko (nightingale), and going through the motions of planting, growing, harvesting and eating poppy seeds. At the end, they picked up imaginary Easter baskets and exchanged imaginary Easter eggs, exiting single file as they waved imaginary daffodils above their heads.

"On Sunday, they will carry real baskets and live daffodils, but the Easter eggs will be plastic - real eggs could create a problem," Mrs. Genza explained. "They will all be in costume; the girls in embroidered blouses, green or maroon-colored skirts, and flowers in their hair, while the boys will wear Hutsul jackets over their embroidered shirts and brimmed hats."

She added: "Unlike today's rehearsal, where they performed to taped music, the children will be doing the singing themselves."

Mrs. Genza, who has been teaching folk dancing at St. George's on a voluntary basis "for a very long time," is a devotee of Ukrainian dance and folk traditions. She studied Ukrainian dance and ballet while living in Germany during the post-war years; when she came to this country in 1952, she joined the Verkhovyntsi Dancers of New York, a group directed by Oleh Genza and sponsored by the Ukrainian American Youth Association (SUM-A). In time, she became Mrs. Oleh Genza, as well as the co-director of the Verkhovyntsi and took part in numerous performances in New York and around the country that included appearances in tours of the Ukrainian Opera Company.

Continuing as director of the Verkhovyntsi Dancers after her husband's death in 1983, she coordinated the appearance of a group of Ukrainian dancers at the 1986 Olympics in California. Since the demise of the Verkhovyntsi Dancers some years ago, she has continued to work with the children at St. George's. She says that teaching hahilky to children of all grades and preparing the high-school students for folk-dance performances in St. George's annual street festival has brought her great personal satisfaction and the gratitude and appreciation of parents.

A Paleolithic holdover

Hahilky are the oldest form of musical expression in Ukraine, dating back to the Paleolithic era, according to Slava Gerulak, curator of the Mayana Gallery. They combine words, music and movement, forming a living ritual; the ideas expressed in hahilky can be found in Ukrainian embroideries, textiles and pysanky, she told a gallery audience recently. Hahilky are also known as "hayivky," "yahilky" and "vesnivky."

The evening, planned as a welcome to spring and the Easter festival, featured delightful spring greetings sung as duets by Alla Kutsevych of Yonkers, N.Y., and Lavrentia Turkewicz of New York. One of their selections "Vyidy, vyidy, Ivanku" (Come out, come out, Ivan) was identified by Ms. Gerulak as the melody that formed the basis of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Ms. Kutsevych, who teaches classes in bandura playing and folk singing to young people in Yonkers, Manhattan and Astoria, led a group of her bandura students through a set of pleasant hahilky melodies. The musicians and their instructor set aside their instruments to perform a number of hahilky dances, including the popular "zhuchok," and movements emulating an endless chain and the sowing and harvesting of poppy seeds.

An old Ukrainian custom that was new to U.S. residents was demonstrated by Ms. Kutsevych when she moved among visitors, proferring a tray of bird-shaped cookies, all the while singing about the zhaivoronok (skylark) who has appeared to announce the coming of spring. Ms. Kutsevych, a native of Ukraine's Volyn region, has toured in this country with the Ostap Stakhiv Folk Theater of Lviv.

Among those who joined in nibbling on cookie birds was Ben Yarmolinsky, a representative of the New York State Council on the Arts, who had come to listen to a bandura performance but went away with a new understanding of Ukrainian ritual spring songs and folk customs.

The classic store for smoked meats

Martha Stewart, the doyenne of home entertaining, craftwork and interior decorating, has been shopping here for over 30 years, dropping by before Easter "to pick up kielbasa, ham and horseradish" (as she noted in the March issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine). Actress Glenn Close, a steady customer for years, buys hams as Christmas gifts for all her friends. The late James Beard, famed cookbook author, used to be a customer, and celebrities like Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Robert Prosky, Jack Warden and Robert Conrad frequent the establishment.

The store is Kurowycky Meat Products, at 124 First Ave. (between Seventh and Eighth streets). The Zagat Survey, a publication that reports public response, gave the Kurowycky shop this commendation in 1996: "Very few things in the East Village smell so good as this august Ukrainian meat market. Respondents are in hog heaven over its good fresh meats, including the best ham in the U.S. and wonderful Easter European specialties such as kielbasa. This classic is also one of the only legal smokehouses in Manhattan."

"Kielbasa," as the public likes to call it, or "kovbasa," the Ukrainian term for a plump, rosy ring of spice-laden, pork-based sausage, is indeed a specialty at Kurovycky's; it's made almost daily, and it is the choice of many kovbasa connoisseurs from as far away as Philadelphia. That portion of kovbasa in your Easter basket may have been bought at Kurowycky's, almost a certainty if it's a mini-kovbasa (an Easter specialty at Kurowycky's).

I spent more than an hour at Kurowycky's on a recent Friday morning, watching the process of kovbasa-making. Dry-cured (salted) meat, prepared in a large stainless steal tub, was transferred to a mixing tub, where spices were added and a mechanical blending process took place. Fed by hand into a mechanical stuffer, the mixture was pushed out through a tube into pre-washed, edible casings.

It was a two-man operation, with one butcher controlling the stuffer and cutting lengths of kovbasa as they curled into rings on the stainless steel table, the other tying the ends together and hanging finished sausages on tall racks equipped with rails. A few dozen sausages were set aside for customers who ask for non-smoked kovbasa.

Once filled, a rack was wheeled into the next room and placed in one of four smokehouses, where the sausages were exposed to smoke from a gas-and-wood chips fire for four hours. The final result: hot, gleaming-red sausages with a very pungent aroma.

Smoking starts at 6:30 in the morning, with just about everything - bacon, salami, hams and 40 different types of sausage - going through the process. While fresh meat is available for the convenience of customers, the major part of the Kurowycky business is smoked meat, including liverwurst "mazurka" sausage made with garlic and caraway, and "kabanos," a highly spiced, dry hunter's sausage. Frankfurters, pale because no coloring is used, are all meat and very fresh. The store also carries a selection of imported Eastern European jams, teas, syrups and soups, primarily Polish and German items, and some breads and pastries made by local Polish and Lithuanian bakeries.

Jerry Kurowycky Sr., who operates the store with his son, Jerry Kurowycky Jr., says the store has received endless publicity since December 1975, when The New York Times published a full-page article, "Mecca for Hams and Sausages," by food writer Mimi Sheraton. "I think it's a matter of being consistent," the older Mr. Kurowycky remarked. Although certain aspects of the business have been modernized, the traditions have been kept intact. Time-saving devices are avoided since the Kurowycky motto is "time is flavor, time is quality." Mindful of their ethnic origin, the Kurowycky men also take time to point out that they are Ukrainian (not Polish as many people assume) and the sausage they produce is Ukrainian kovbasa.

The Kurowycky meat market was founded by Erast Kurowycky, a master butcher from Horodenka, western Ukraine, who came to the U.S. in 1949 and started to work for the Stasiuk meat market. When he retired in 1974, his son took over the reins. Grandson Jerry, a New York University graduate who grew up with the business, found the store so intriguing he gave up working as a production assistant at ABC Television to join his father in the business.

Jerry Jr. refers to the three-generation business as "the great American success story, because we now own the first store in the U.S. that my grandfather worked in. He started working here in 1949 when this was still Stasiuk's, and we wound up buying the place in 1974."

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