DATELINE NEW YORK: Exploring the legacy of Gogol/Hohol (02/20/00)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Exploring the legacy of Gogol/Hohol

by Helen Smindak

How does one examine the work of one of the greatest writers of the 19th century and present it to the public in a way that is unique, entertaining and educational?

If you're Virlana Tkacz, director of the internationally active Yara Arts Group, you invite a diverse group of contemporary artists, writers and performers to create works on paper, videos and installations, and music, theater and dance pieces inspired by the short stories of author Nikolai Gogol. Add to this medley a continuous showing of films based on Gogol's stories and a reading of a new play. Voilà - a three-day event combining an art exhibit, a film festival and an evening of dance, music and poetry, all focusing attention on the work of a Ukrainian writer, born Mykola Hohol in the village of Velyki Sorochyntsi, Myrhorod county of the Poltava region, almost 200 years ago.

The Gogol/Hohol festival was held during the February 4-6 weekend at the Ukrainian Institute of America, taking up three floors of the stately Fifth Avenue mansion. In the library on the first floor, visitors watched a parade of black-and-white and color films that included Alexander Alexeieff's widely acclaimed animated work "Le Nez" (no words, just a musical background); the Dovzhenko Film Studio's 1968 color production "Vechir Na Ivana Kupala," one of the great examples of Ukrainian poetic cinema (censored until 1988); the Russian treatment of "The Overcoat" with Kyiv-born Roman Bykov portraying the lowly and tattered principal character; and Warner Brothers' 1949 technicolor musical "The Inspector General," starring the irrepressible Danny Kaye.

Ms. Tkacz told "Dateline": "Our whole point (in holding this festival) was to provoke people to look at Gogol again, to react to his work."

The participating artists looked, and looked closely, coming up with paintings, photographs, sculptures and installation based on Gogol's stories, excerpts from stories and even single phrases. Among the art works eliciting attention in second- and third-floor rooms and stairways were Anya Farion's "Overcoat Dream," a mixed-media installation combining a patchwork overcoat, a makeshift loom and bobbins of thread; Annette Friedman's interpretation of swans in "Taras Bulba," depicted by smooth bird sculptures, one in marble, the other in marplex; Stephan Tur's twin portrait in steel titled "Gogol/Hohol" and another work in steel inspired by Gogol's "The Mysterious Portrait"; and Yuri Lev's fujix prints showing a wedding in Ukraine, a parish priest in Yaremche and flower-selling women at the Lviv marketplace - photos taken during recent trips to Ukraine, now reminders of life in Ukraine as Gogol described it in "Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka" and other stories.

Also admired were painter/photographer Peter Hrytsyk's series of stunning black-and-white prints, Alexandra Isaievych's bold and bright depictions of the magic circle which a terrified character in "Viy" (The Witch) draws around himself for protection, and Olga Maryschuk's collage of a wooden church, another reference to "Viy." Joel Schlemowitz utilized a mixture of media, including a black tent, to portray the moon looking out on a heavenly May night in Ukraine.

Other artists who interpreted Gogol's descriptions of Ukraine with unusual results included Rosie Cutler (oil on canvas), Marc Ferguson (oil and alkyd on canvas), Cynthia Karalla (installation of live mourners), Alexander Khantaev (color prints), Peter Melville (mixed-media installations), Margaret Morton (black-and-white prints), Yevgeniya Plechkina (silkscreen on paper), Carmen Pujols (laser print), Irina Rosovskaya (digital prints), Marianna Trofimova (pen, ink and watercolor on paper), Marybeth Ward and Ozzie Rodriguez (video/audio installation) and Tristan Wolski (watercolor on paper). All the artists in the show are active on the New York scene, their works displayed in museums, galleries and stage settings, and in book and magazine illustrations.

Saturday evening's program spotlighted the performing talents of modern dance specialist Katja Pylyshenko Kolcio, singer/bandurist Julian Kytasty, Lviv-born folk-song historian and performer Maryana Sadovska from Poland and humorist Eugene Hutz, as well as the poetry of Christine Turczyn.

Ms. Kolcio, whose Kolo Project creates performance events integrating dance with community and heritage, teaches dance at a number of New York institutions, including the Bridge for Dance studio. She teamed up with dancers Sarah Adams and Gina Jacobs in an installation/movement piece to interpret "Her Legs Fly Out on Their Own" from Gogol's story "The Lost Letter."

Mr. Kytasty, a master of traditional styles with a distinctly contemporary sensibility, was joined by Ms. Sadovska, an actress and musical director with Gardzienice Experimental Theater in Poland, and the Yara Group's Missouri-born Tristra Newyear in a round of Ukrainian folk songs featuring the village-style "bilyi holos" (white sound). Musical accompaniment came from Mr. Kytasty's bandura and flute and Ms. Sadovska's harmonium, an instrument that looks like a reproduction of a small piano and sounds like the accordion.

Continuing the folk-song theme, Ms. Sadovska, a young woman with a highly engaging stage manner, enthralled the audience with old folk songs she has collected during expeditions throughout the Poltava, Hutsul and Lemko regions of Ukraine - songs authenticated by the drawn-out wails and quavering voice of an old woman or the yodel-like voice of a strong village woman.

A new poem by Ms. Turczyn, a Fulbright Scholar who teaches literature and writing at William Paterson University, received a dramatic reading from Yara actresses Xenia Piaseckyj, Jennifer Rohn and Meredith Wright. Kyiv-born Mr. Hutz, now the front man for the popular downtown New York band Gogol Bordello, brought the program to a hilarious close with some of his original New York fables, produced in Ukrainian and English.

The festival was rounded out on Sunday afternoon with a reading of a new play by Mason Golden based on Gogol's short story "Portraits." Med Arbous, Dima Dubson, Oleg Dubson, Alessandro Maipana and Kourtney Rutherford handled the reading project with aplomb.

Conceived and directed by Ms. Tkacz, whose Yara Arts Group is a resident company at the internationally acclaimed La Mama Experimental Theater in New York, the festival had the assistance of Michelle Cerone, Dzvinka Dobrianska, Anatoli Leshchenko, Tanya Lysenecky, Andriy Mikhailiuk, Jina Ob and Shigeko Suga. Isabelle Dupuis and Ms. Tkacz curated the art exhibit, and Ms. Dobrianska served as film curator.

Gogol's works have been published in hundreds of translations; his writings were frequently imitated by Ukrainian writers and had an effect on the early writings of many Russian authors, including Turgenev and Dostoyevsky. His style is considered Romantic, showing a masterly use of metaphor, hyperbole and the ironic grotesque.

While working as a minor civil servant in St. Petersburg, Russia, Gogol composed short stories based on his observations and memories of life in Ukraine - "Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka" (1931-1832) and "Myrhorod" (1835), containing the first version of his famous historical novelette "Taras Bulba." In 1835 he also published "Arabesques," his first stories dealing with the life of the St. Petersburg civil servants; he turned to writing drama and published two plays, his great "Inspector General" and "The Marriage," as well as the famous satirical story "The Nose."

Discouraged because his idea of the moral influence of true art did not have the effect he desired, Gogol left Russia in 1836 and lived abroad, mostly in Rome, until 1849. During the years abroad he devoted himself to his epic work "Dead Souls," completing only the first of three intended parts (1842), wrote his famous story "The Overcoat" (1841) and revised "Taras Bulba" and a portion of "Arabesques." In 1845 he wrote his didactic essays "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" (1847). Later, believing himself unable to produce morally ennobling art, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, then returned to Russia, burned the second part of "Dead Souls" and took to his bed, refusing to eat. He died in Moscow in 1852.

Although his ideological writings provoked controversy and his indifference to the Ukrainian question has been condemned by many Ukrainian critics, scholars have stressed the importance of Ukrainian elements in Gogol's stories and the contribution his Russian works made to the development of a Ukrainian national identity. Gogol's collection of 1,000 Ukrainian folk songs was published in 1908, and his collection of materials for a Ukrainian dictionary is included in collected works prepared by Grippius.

A musical collage

There seems to be a dearth of large performing ensembles from Ukraine in the past year (apart from children's troupes), but small groups have been dropping in every few months, like the six-man Pikardiiska Tertsiia vocal ensemble which performed at the Ukrainian National Home last summer and the Ukrayinski Barvy (Ukrainian Colors) trio heard at the Ukrainian Institute of America in January.

One of the finest small groups visiting here recently was a five-member music ensemble from Lviv which calls itself simply Collage, since its repertoire consists of a collage of more than 60 pieces in various styles and genres, ranging from well-known classics to beautiful selections of Ukrainian music. In its first U.S. tour, Collage appeared at the Ukrainian National Home in New York on January 20 with violoncellist Halyna Zhuk, violinists Yuriy Voitynskiy and Pavlo Zavialov, and flutist Serhyi Lutsenko. Sofia Soloviy, soprano, was the soloist.

Great precision and excellent tone and harmony became evident as hallmarks of the ensemble as the instrumentalists performed Mozart's "Divertimento II" (KV.137), Boccherini's "Minuet" and two popular high-spirited works by Johann Strauss, the string-plucked "Pizzicato Polka" and the martial "Radetzky March." Ms. Soloviy, a prize winner in solo performances at international competitions, revealed a bright, high soprano voice as she sang an aria from Bortniansky's opera "Alcide" and Franck's "Ave Maria." In "Spanish Song" by Delibes and Denza's "Funiculi Funiculà," she communicated a joie de vivre befitting the mood of these ethnic pieces.

Appearing for the second half of the program in folk dress in lieu of the formal attire worn earlier (and simultaneously shedding its chamber ensemble image), the Collage ensemble also switched to a somewhat lighter repertoire - Huryn's arrangement of the Christmas carol "Na Nebi Zirka" (A Star in Heaven), an arrangement of the folk song "Marichka" by Zhuk, and Fitsalovych's lively "Kolomyika." Holding true to the ensemble's name, the performers included other music styles as well - classical pieces such as Skoryk's "Melody," Liudkevych's "Ukrainian Barcarolle" and Barvinsky's "Prayer." They left a warm glow in the audience with their encore performance of Yulij Meitus' composition "Vid Sela do Sela" (From Village to Village).

Serving as emcee for Collage (and its entire tour) was Kateryna Nemyra, director of the Svitlytsia Art Center in Cleveland, who radiates a personal warmth and exuberance that further charmed the audience.

Founded in 1996 by students of the Lysenko Academy of Music, Collage is headed by Ms. Zhuk, who was won prizes in international competitions for solo violoncello performances. Mr. Lutsenko plays a unique wind instrument in a style few musicians have mastered today, using an old (pre-Boehm) method that's considered to be finger-breaking. Mr. Voltynskyi has just been named first violinist of the Virsky Opera Theater in Kyiv.

Since her auspicious debut as Adina in Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore," Ms. Soloviy is being hailed in Ukraine as the next Solomiia Krushelnytska, Ukraine's world-famous dramatic soprano. She showed a certain shyness and a somewhat uneasy stage presence during the New York program (possibly due to her youthful age or the presence of Ukraine's acting consul general in New York, Anna Kushniryk), but these are small minuses she'll no doubt overcome during upcoming studies in Italy with renowned vocal teachers.

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