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Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego
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Project Rasa

logoWithin Project Rasa, Maisternia Pisni work on musical material and movement originating from Ukrainian female rituals, as well as from rituals of the annual cycle, focusing on the role of the women's role. The members of Maisternia examine selected songs, deriving from various Ukrainian regions – especially from Vinnica, Poltava and Polesia – in light of rituals, which the company endeavours to find in and through the songs. The next phase of the project consists of the attempt to find an adequate theatrical form for this research. This stage of the work is the search for the ‘elements of ritual within stage actions’.

Natalka Polovynka, Uliana Horbachevska, Olena Kostyuk. Fot. Aleksandr SiniaginParticipants of the project: Sergey Kovalevich (project leader and director), Natalka Polovynka (music director), Uliana Horbachevska, Olena Kostyluk.





Olena Kostyluk. Fot. Aleksandr SiniaginNotes on the performance On Sunday Morning, realised within the framework of the project:
‘Sunday morning. . . – the moment of being, when consciousness awakes, early in the morning, the sun has just risen, the time of doing nothing, the time of the presence of Time. Sunday – no-action; holiday. Idle existence consecrated and sanctified by Eternity. Ritual – always interferes with time. The Ukrainian songs, from girls’ rituals within the annual cycle, on which the performance has been based, came from our bodies’ memories. They did not ask us whether we wanted to sing them, whether we understood their unpretentious simplicity, or whether we had any grounds for this holy singing. We have, after all, left the places where these songs were born. Yet it is possible that we are the penultimate group capable of taking in this knowledge that comes from the depth of centuries, from the depths of Time itself. Today these songs no longer hold their pragmatic meaning; if anything, they help us to live. Perhaps they are the anguish of the Earth, or the Earth itself, which walks with us.

Uliana Horbachevska. Fot. Aleksandr SiniaginThe performance lacks a narrative theme. It is the “Story of the Time of the Tree of Song”. The theme of the girl has been the same throughout the centuries: She sits and waits, while He rides, rides for his whole life. It is snowing on Sunday morning. And thus we have the storyline: “On Sunday morning... standing on a footbridge, she...”
It is with great joy that we present to you these sacred old texts, for Tradition lives only in the presence of an Other; such as You’.