Ivan Kupalo Night attracts diverse audience in New York City (10/01/00)

Ivan Kupalo Night attracts diverse audience in New York City

by Mykhailo Andrec

NEW YORK - A group of dancers, artists, and musicians on Saturday, July 22, staged the second "Ivan Kupalo" (midsummer night) celebration in the East Village community garden on Sixth Street and Avenue B. Yes, we were a bit late with respect to both the summer solstice and the feast of St. John, but hey, you can't always get busy New York musicians and dancers together in synch with the solar system ...

The "happening" went very well. There was a sizable crowd (much bigger than last year's), possibly as a result of good advance publicity (NBC's "Today Show - Weekend NY" featured it as a "pick of the weekend"). The participants were quite diverse, with everybody from kids to 70-year-olds, from hippie throwbacks to recent immigrants, from agnostics to a group of Hasidic Jewish men who wandered in during the latter part of the program. lt would be safe to say that the majority of the crowd was not Ukrainian.

The beginning of the program consisted mainly of dancers associated with Katja Kolcio's "Kolo Project," dancing, playing roles such as gypsy fortune-tellers, helping the visitors make wreaths from flowers, or improvising choreography around the garden as nature spirits, "rusalky" and "mavky," and interacting with the visitors. Visitors explored this enchanted garden, hung fortunes on a magic branch and searched for the legendary "tsvit paporot" (fern flower). A few of the kids had a good deal of fun chasing the nature spirits around the garden.

The Experimental Bandura Trio (Julian Kytasty, Jurij Fedynsky and this writer) started out in the roles of "live musical garden ornaments": each staked out some corner of the garden and played. For the finale, the trio moved over to a stage area where its music could be amplified, and the dancers gradually coaxed the audience into the area, where all were given lit candles.

Each audience member placed a candle in the open area in front of the stage, and the participants formed a circle around the mass of candles. The less timid of all ages (from age 8 to 78) took turns jumping over the "bonfire" of candles.

This was followed by a "water purification," as audience members were to dip their fingers into a large kettle of water and sprinkle themselves. Instead, many decided to douse themselves with a whole ladleful. During this whole ceremony the Experimental Bandura Trio played improvised "incidental music" based on several traditional Kupalo melodies.

The Night of Kupalo culminated in a grand procession with all holding hands in a chain from the garden on Avenue B for three blocks to the east, with Julian Kytasty in the lead in his self-imposed role as the "Pied Piper of the Lower East Side", and over the FDR Drive to the East River. At the river, those who had made wreaths threw them out into the water. There can be no doubt that passers-by were at least slightly amused at the sight of a long chain of singing people going down the sidewalk led by young women in white robes and a mustachioed recorder-player in a Hawaiian shirt...

All in all, it was a very interesting and fun evening.

The Ivan Kupalo happening in the East Village Community Garden was initiated in 1998 by Virlana Tkacz as a Nova Nomada event. This summer, while Ms. Tkacz was away in Ukraine, she invited Ms. Kolcio's Kolo Project and the Experimental Bandura Trio to carry the flame (literally). Many expressed hope that this turns into an annual event; it looks as though it might...

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