DATELINE NEW YORK: Carnival time brings Malanka fervor (02/18/01)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Carnival time brings Malanka fervor

by Helen Smindak

The ancient Ukrainian folk feast known as Malanka, celebrating the Julian-calendar New Year, presented a tempting idea that theatrical producer Virlana Tkacz ingeniously utilized to create another weekend festival of music, song, poetry and art, the 11th major event staged at the Institute by Ms. Tkacz and her Yara Arts Group.

Traditionally, Malanka festivities revolved around a group of costumed characters and musicians who went from house to house in the village making music and presenting skits. Malanka, played by a bachelor dressed in women's clothing and accompanied by persons costumed as a goat, an old man, an old woman and a gypsy, played pranks on the villagers.

Ms. Tkacz and the Yara ensemble invited a host of contemporary artists, writers and performers to present their "reaction to the pagans" at a Malanka weekend on January 26-28 at the Ukrainian Institute of America. The result: an exhilarating three days of art work, winter songs and poetry, as well as something very new - a unique presentation of traditional holiday foods.

Performance highlights came on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon with appearances by Canadian singer and culture maker Alexis Kochan; singers from Ukraine Maryana Sadovska, Yaryna Turianska and Natalka Polovynka, who find their inspiration from songs they collect in the villages; harpist Odarka Polanskyj of New Jersey: and such popular New York area artists as bandurist Julian Kytasty, bandleader/comedian Eugene Hutz and folk fiddler John Rublowsky.

Saturday's performance opened with a set of haunting Ukrainian carols and folk songs as Ms. Kochan and Mr. Kytasty artfully blended voices in mellow, soulful offerings; there were also poetic solos by Ms. Kochan whose mystical effect was matched by Mr. Kytasty's expressive bandura and flute accompaniment. Much of the music came from their newly released CD "Paris to Kyiv: Prairie Nights and Peacock Feathers," which takes its name from the Ukrainian folk song that tells the story of a young woman who fashions a head wreath from a peacock's dropped feathers before stepping out to dance.

A spirited duet and two spring songs by Ms. Kochan and Mr. Kytasty generated a melodious, bouyant air to the evening, effecting a natural segue for the animated entrance of Ms. Turianska, Mr. Rublowsky and bass player Oleh Ivanyschuk, who comes from Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. Ms. Turianska's strident yet pleasant-sounding Carpathian village songs were matched by the exuberant fiddling of Mr. Rublowsky, who spun off a few dance tunes on his own, including the rousing Carpathian dance "Verkhovyno." Ms. Polovynka, a member of Lviv's Les Kurbas Theater and a soloist with the Revutsky Men's Choir, beautifully demonstrated the village-style "white voice" singing that she picked up in the villages of Ukraine.

A rollicking, boisterous presentation of songs by Mr. Hutz, Alexander Kozachkov and the gypsy singer Piroshka electrified listeners with its frenzy of hooting and hollering. Then the stage was given over to the enchanting singing of Ms. Sadovska, a Lviv-born actress who until recently was the musical director of the Gardzienice Experimental Theater in Poland.

Following the tradition of costumed Malanka figures, Ms. Sadovska entered the auditorium in a baggy, floor-length outfit, her brunette locks tucked under a baseball cap and an accordion strapped around her waist and shoulders. The costume was soon stripped off to reveal a figure-flattering red dress and the accordion was exchanged for a harmonium. Ms. Sadovska was joined by Korean American Jina Oh and Japanese American Akiko Hiroshima in bewitching winter songs from various regions of Ukraine. With Ms.Turianska and Mr. Hutz participating, the ensemble prompted the audience to join in singing the chorus of the traditional carol "Shchedryi Vechir, Dobryi Vechir" (Generous Eve, Good Eve).

After the music and the merriment, there was a gastronomic surprise in the candle-lit dining room - traditional holiday foods offered in an innovative, untraditional manner. Arranged in trays on buffet tables were finger foods that tastefully and elegantly represented borsch, kutia, pyrizhky, mlyntsi (buckwheat pancakes), nalysnyky (blintzes) and uzvar (compote). Prepared by Olesia Lew of Brooklyn, a former nutrition and food writer who studied cooking and pastry making at Baltimore International Culinary, the refreshments were artfully presented by Ms. Lew and Stefa Charczenko, manager of the events planning department for Merchants Restaurant Group.

Taking the place of borsch were toasted kolach pieces topped with finely grated beets, carrots, onions and mushrooms; instead of kutia, cooked wheatberries, poppy seed and honey were served in pastry nests. Tiny half-moon pastries filled with a mixture of soured cabbage, mushrooms and onions interpreted pyrizhky. Compote, cooked down into a jam, was spread on mini buckwheat pancakes, while nalysnyky were served sliced on the bias. The delicious foods were set around a huge museum-size jar filled with ruby-red borshch and its components - beets, vegetables, dill and onions - and capped by a wreath of wheat stalks.

Sunday's program (not attended by this reporter) was reportedly as delightful as Saturday's, spotlighting the talents of several singers and musicians - Ms. Turianska, Laura Biagi, Tristra Newyear, Ilya Temkin, Ms. Polanskyj, the Experimental Bandura Trio (Ms. Kytasty, Michael Andrec and Jurij Fedynsky) and David DiPietro. Interspersed among the musical offerings were poetry readings by author/essayist Kristina Lucenko of Brooklyn, a non-fiction editor of the literary magazine Post Road, and poet/scholar/translator Vasyl Makhno, author of several books of poetry who compiled the anthology "Poets of the Nineties" and published a monograph on the work of Bohdan Ihor Antonych. Ms. Tkacz read poems by Christine Turczyn, winner of last year's Allen Ginsberg poetry award.

The art exhibit, which opened Friday evening, included the work of Kateryna Nemyra of Parma Heights, Ohio, whose two-goat sculpture of metal and wood was an imaginative play on the goat figure typical of Malanka revelries. Zoriana Sokhatska, a native of Ukraine who has been a Philadelphia resident since 1995, contributed three vibrant batik and tapestry panels inspired by Ukrainian Easter eggs. Translucent figures were superimposed on the colorful, spontaneous canvas which represented the work of Lviv-born Alexandra Isaievych, co-curator of the exhibit with Isabelle Dupuis. (Ms. Isaievych's paintings, by the way, are on view this month at the Interchurch Center at Riverside Drive and 120th Street.)

Other impressive works included a collage by Olga Maryschuk, a painting by mural artist Youlia Tkatchouk and a mixed media work by Carmen Pujols, Yara's resident graphic designer. Also shown were interesting sculptures by Ihor Bereza, Anya Farion, Annette S. Friedman, Maria Lupo and Tristan Wolski, as well as photographs by Petro Hrycyk, Margaret Morton and Algis Norvila, and "Song Tree" slides by research scientist Peter Ihnat.

Guests viewed an inventive installation by film-maker Joel Schlemowitz called "Lada Sleeps" (Lada is the goddess of spring) featuring hand-painted film projected onto a nest of white eggs; a video of archival footage of winter rituals from the Carpathians and footage from Yara's recent "Song Tree" production, created by award-winning film-maker Andrea Odezynska, and a film installation based on winter songs by Jason Eksuzian.

Portraying 10 years of Yara Arts Group's theater productions, photos by Watoku Ueno, Victor Maruschenko and Dorian Yurchuk, and posters by Ms. Pujols and Tom Lee were displayed on the grand stairway leading from the lobby to the second floor during the weekend.

A resident company at the internationally acclaimed La Mama Experimental Theatre in the East Village, the Yara Arts Group creates original theatre pieces that celebrate the cultures of the East. Yara's next work (as yet untitled) will premiere at La Mama March on 15 to April 1.

Gorski in CBS mini-series

Canadian-born actress Tamara Gorski played an important role in the fact-based, four-hour mini-series "Haven," broadcast on February 11 and 14 by the CBS Television network. The drama, based on Ms. Gruber's non-fiction book, chronicles the moving true story of Ruth Gruber, a young Jewish U.S. government official who, in 1944, helped escort nearly 1,000 Holocaust survivors from war-torn Europe to a temporary haven in America.

Starring Tony Award-winning Natasha Richardson as Ms. Gruber, with Hal Holbrook as Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes and Martin Landau and Anne Bancroft as Ms. Gruber's parents, "Haven" tells the story of the refugees' voyage from Naples across the Atlantic to the United States and then by train to an army base outside Oswego, N.Y., focusing on terrifying moments in the lives of several refugees.

As Manya Brueur, a beautiful escapee from five concentration camps, a dreamer and dancer in her youth, Ms. Gorski effectively portrays a wan, disconsolate refugee who goes berserk outside the abandoned military barracks when the refugees are greeted by searchlights, fences and soldiers pointing guns.

The second episode, by far the more gripping, brings a fine performance from Ms. Gorski as Manya, who falls in love with fellow refugee Ernst (Henry Czerny) and tells the delighted Ruth they want to marry. When the U.S. government won't allow it, Manya is reported missing during a snowstorm and the whole camp, as well as compassionate townspeople, form a search party to find her.

Through Ruth's efforts, the refugees are allowed to go to work and school in town. At war's end, Ruth learns from the War Refugee Board that Congress voted to send the refugees back to Europe, just as the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt had intended. Urged by her mother to talk to President Harry S. Truman, Ruth meets with the president and Truman ultimately announces he will not make the Oswego refugees return to Europe. The mini-series ends on a hopeful note as the elated refugees remain in the United States to become proud and productive American citizens.

An interesting sidelight to 'Haven" is the information that the refugees may have originally come from Ukraine. In a February 8 interivew on the PBS show "Charlie Rose," the trim and attractively dressed Ms. Gruber, now 89, told Mr. Rose that "the Jews were thrown into this camp in the Rumanian Ukraine," though she did not explain who put them there.

Ms. Gorski met the real Manya Brueur during a February 7 screening of "Haven" at the Jewish Museum in Los Angeles, where Ms. Brueur resides and is a docent of the museum. A petite, lovely young woman who was born in Winnipeg, worked out of Toronto and is now based in New York, Ms. Gorski has appeared as the recurring character Morrigan in the popular TV series "Hercules." Her film work includes "Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris" with Omar Sharif and Angela Lansbury, and "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Around town

Bass Paul Plishka appeared in two Metropolitan Opera productions in one day this month. On February 10, appearing as one of the conspirators in the matinee (and final) performance of Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera," he was heard on the Texaco Radio Broadcast on PBS. That evening he performed the role of Count des Grieux in Massenet's "Manon," earning this commendation from The New York Times' Anne Midgette: "Paul Plishka gave a convincing portrayal of dignity in advancing years as a Des Grieux pere (father) with a very wide vibrato."

Orysia Paszczak Tracz, who writes the "The Things We Do" column for The Ukrainian Weekly, breezed into town from Winnipeg early this month, eager to show her youngest son, Ruslan, 18, the sights of New York, among them: The Ukrainian Museum, Surma's book store, the Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization and other Ukrainian institutions in the Big Apple. Also on their route was a visit to the Fourth Street address where her husband, Myroslaw, used to live and St. George's Ukrainian Catholic Church, where he sang in the choir. I tagged along with them for part of the route and got acquainted with a fellow columnist who also loves to travel, especially to Ukraine. Born in Germany and reared in New Jersey, the effervescent Ms. Tracz has been to Ukraine multiple times, the last five trips as tour guide. This year's tour is scheduled for July 30 to August 14. "We'll cover Ukraine from Kyiv to the Carpathians, with visits to ancestral villages and towns by arrangement," she told me. Ms. Tracz said she was looking forward with great enthusiasm to this summer's round of museums, walking tours, lectures, craftspeople, bazaars, traditional foods and what she calls "serendipity." (For tour information, contact Orysia Tracz at [email protected].)

American Ballet Theatre principal dancers Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky are pictured on the cover of the February issue of "Dance Magazine." The husband-wife team will be paired in "Cinderella," "Giselle" "The Merry Widow" and "Don Quixote" during the ABT season at the Metropolitian Opera House beginning on April 30, and will be joined by fellow Ukrainian Vladimir Malakhov in leading roles in the June 16 production of "Swan Lake."

Kyiv-born Milla Jovovich has a starring role in the recently released Mel Gibson adventure "The Million Dollar Hotel." As a member of a collection of outcasts, Ms. Jovovich plays the lovely Eloise, an introverted rosebud who wanders the hotel's halls clutching books like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" when she's not hidden away in a room that looks like a second-hand paperback store. Though completed in 1999 by Lions Gate Films, "Hotel" made the rounds of film festivals and is only now receiving a commercial release.

Helen Smindak's e-mail address is [email protected].

| Home Page |