Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble

CWF Lead artist: Ellen Sebastian Chang
Project Title: The Rusalki Cycle
Recipient Organization: KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble
Lead Artist: Ellen Sebastian Chang
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing Arts, June 2002
To Be Presented: TBA

Through this collaboration, director Ellen Sebastian Chang, composer Mariana Sadovska, and KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble will create an evening-length “futuristic folk opera,” weaving together traditional Slavic folk songs with original, new vocal and instrumental music. Their opera, The Rusalki Cycle, will be performed by KITKA’s nine vocalists, accompanied by an ensemble of Western classical and Eastern European folk musicians. Its focal point, the Rusalki, are powerful female figures in Slavic folklore, who appear in many old songs sung by village women in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and surrounding regions.

The Rusalka of traditional beliefs is a strong and enticing female entity who inhabits the waters, forests, and fields. The Rusalki are thought to be the spirits of women who have died untimely or unjust deaths (such as brides who died on their wedding nights, or young mothers who perished in childbirth). They are spinners who regulate human, animal, and agricultural fertility, as well as the cycles of the seasons and weather. The legends vary by region and context. In Bulgaria, the Rusalki are shape-shifting, sometimes vengeful protectors of the natural world. In the folk arts, Rusalki are depicted as beautiful, siren-like women (half-woman and half-bird or half-fish) with wild, unbound hair (a striking contrast to “proper” Slavic maidens with meticulous plaits and married or widowed women who traditional conceal their hair). Legends often tell of the Rusalki luring unsuspecting passers-by into the water with their cries, laughter, or magical songs. In Slavic peasant culture, the Rusalka is feared, appeased, and celebrated, through song, dance, storytelling, and ritual during the spring festival Rusal’naia Nedelia (Rusalaka week).

This rich folklore has moved the collaborating artists to create a work drawing inspiration from ancient Slavic folk songs, legends, and rituals. They plan to transform ancient materials into a non-narrative, contemporary performance piece that speaks to human and environmental issues relevant to both the past and the future.

Lead artist Ellen Sebastian Chang brings to this project a wide-ranging background in lighting design, playwrighting, and stage direction. She has 16 years of experience as a multi-disciplinary director, including many projects with cross-cultural themes, incorporating traditional art forms, and focusing on women’s issues. Chang and KITKA have followed one another’s work since 1998, when Chang directed KITKA in Cal Performances’ Klezmer Mania! She writes, “My past work, Sanctified about Zora Neale Hurston’s work with Afro-Haitian folklore and the religion of Voudon and my understanding of the political nature of African American women’s hair, draws me to the mythology of the Rusalki and Eastern European women's symbolic relationship to hair and power."

Composer Mariana Sadovska has worked all her life in both music and theatre. Born in 1972, in the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, she was trained as a classical pianist as a young girl at the Lviv Conservatory. In her late teens, she joined Lviv’s Les Kurbas Theatre, one of Ukraine’s leading theater companies. From 1991-2001, Sadovska worked as a principal actor, composer, and music director with the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices in Poland. Since the fall of 1999, she has appeared as a collaborating artist in three Yara Arts Group festivals at La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York. Current projects touring internationally include “Callings” and “In the Beginning There Was a Song,” both duo performances with the Israeli experimental vocalist Victoria Hanna; and the multi-media “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” with Poland’s Quartet Jorgi and the Berlin-based filmmaker Hiroko Tanahashi.

Over its 21-year performance history, KITKA has earned international acclaim for its innovative presentations of traditional and contemporary Eastern European vocal music. In recent seasons, the ensemble has collaborated with a number of composers, choreographers, filmmakers, and theater directors. KITKA’s sound is distinctive, making use of contemporary-sounding extended vocal techniques.

Folksongs often have an unknown origin, seeming to have almost organically emerged from experiences of everyday life. Throughout Eastern Europe, as in many other areas of the world, the elemental beauty of folk music has inspired countless composers to write new settings of folk songs, or entirely original compositions that recall folkloric settings. To further explore this territory between the ancient and contemporary, in 2000, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Multi-Arts Production program and the National Endowment for the Arts, KITKA launched the New Folksongs program, through which it is engaging American and Eastern European composers to write and/or arrange new works specifically for the ensemble. The first work completed was The Space of Spirit by Pauline Oliveros. The Rusalki Cycle will be the most ambitious New Folksongs project to date.

Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director, writer, and creative consultant. She began her career as a lighting designer and technician and served as the technical director and lighting designer for The Blake Street Hawkeyes from 1979-1983. Her directorial work is highly influenced by her love of and affinity with the movement, color, and temperature of light and shadow. Chang was the co-founder and artistic director of Life on the Water, a nationally and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. She has had successful working relationships with many solo performers, including Awela Makeba, Anne Galjour, Whoopi Goldberg, Holly Hughes, Leonard Pitt, Bill Talen, and Charlie Varon.

Currently she is a directing and producing consultant with the Zellerbach Family Fund’s Technical Assistance Program. She is one of a handful of artists to receive two Creative Work Fund grants: in her previous project she collaborated with Brava! For Women in the Arts to create Teatro Armonia with Mission District youth and adult theater artists.

Directing Credits

• The Gentleman Caller, soundscape location and radio production created for the front and back porch of a private home (2001)
• KAWIT LEGONG: Prince Karna’s Dream, with Gamelon Sekar Jeya and Shadowlight Productions, Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, California (2001, 2003)
• When Sorrow Turns to Joy, with Jon Jang and James Newton and members of the Bejing Opera, Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, California and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2000)
• Game of Life, Suz Takeda (2000)
• Close Encounters of the Third World, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, Latina Theatre Lab, Asian American Theatre Company, and Culture Clash (2000)
• Don’t You Ever Call Me Anything But Mother, John O’Keefe, performed by Helen Shumaker (2000)
• Walkin-Talkin’ Bill Hawkins, William Allen Taylor for the stage and as a documentary for “Lost and Found Sound,” the Millennium Radio Project for National Public Radio (1999)
• Lily Daw and the Three Ladies, Word for Word, Magic Theater (1998)
• Teatro Armonia, Brava! For Women in the Arts (1998)
• Mr. Backlash, Allison Wright, at Venue 9 (1998)
• Dark Passages, Miya Masaoka, Asian Art Museum (1998)
• Klezmer Mania!, Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, California (1998)
• The Blues I’m Playing, Langston Hughes, Word for Word, touring production in Frances (1998)
• Kanji by Starlight, magician David Hirata 1998)
• Solo Pieces of the Quilt, monologues by Danny Hoch, Octavio Solis, and Erin Cressida Wilson for Sean San Jose Blackman (1997)
• Second Skins, environmental fashion show, The Exploratorium, San Francisco, California (1997)
• The Best is Yet to Be, Janet Thornburg (1997)
• STUFF, Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante (1997)
• Mission Possible, Brava! Youth Theater, Brava! For Women in the Arts (1997)
• G-O-to the D, adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in Search of God, broadcast on “Sound Print,” National Public Radio (1997)
• Sanctified, based on the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, San Francisco premiere followed by tour to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Texas (1988)
• Your Place is No Longer With Us (writer and director), created in a Victorian mansion (1982)

Awards

• San Francisco Bay Guardian second place fiction award for “Little Miss Echo” (1997)
• Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for New Directions in Theater, Your Place is No Longer With Us (1982

Mariana Sadovska, Composer

Mariana Sadovska has worked all her life in both music and theatre. Born in 1972 in the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, she was trained as a classical pianist as a young girl at the Lviv Conservatory. In her late teens she joined Lviv’s Les Kurbas Theatre, one of Ukraine’s leading theater companies, known for its intensively physical performance style coupled with rich vocal work.

From 1991 to 2001, Sadovska worked as a principal actor, composer, and music director with the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices in Poland, directed by Vladimierz Staniewski. Gardzienice has received worldwide acclaim for its virtuoso “anthropological-experimental” performances rooted in rugged fieldwork in isolated rural areas of the world. Like Les Kurbas Theatre, Gardzienice’s work is a thrilling combination of physical theater coupled with ecstatic vocal ensemble work. Gardzienice’s productions are the result of “expeditions” to places where traditional culture is still preserved today. With Gardzienice, Ms. Sadovska traveled throughout Eastern and Western Europe as well as to Brazil, Egypt, Japan, and the United States, appearing in the company’s productions of “The Life of Protopope Awwakum,” “Carmina Burana,” and, most recently, “Metamorfozy,” which she co-created with composer Maciej Rychly using relics of ancient Greek music. In 1998, for her role in “Metamorfozy,” she won the “Best Actress Award” given by the Polish Theatre Union. As the musical director of the Gardzienice Theatre, Ms. Sadovska has conducted numerous workshops at colleges, universities, and art centers around the world, including one with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England.

Since the fall of 1999, Sadovska has appeared as a collaborating artist in three Yara Arts Group festivals at La Mama Experimental Theater in New York. She first worked with Yara’s director, Virlana Tkacz, on an international project in Ukraine in 1991, titled, “In the Light.” As Yara’s Artist-in-Residence, in the 2000-01 season, she created the music for and performed in “Song Tree” (2000), “Kupala” (2001-02), and “Obo: Our Shamanism” (2001). At La Mama, Ms. Sadovska also conducted special workshops on Ukrainian traditional Calling Songs, Winter Songs, Spring Songs, and Late Spring Songs. In addition, she performed as a soloist at the Golden Festival and the Balkan Cabaret in New York.

In 2003, Ms. Sadovska created the music for the production of Bogoslaw Schaeffer’s “Qwartet,” directed by Andre Erlen at Forum Freies Theater in Dusseldorf. Current projects touring internationally include “Callings,” and “In the Beginning There Was a Song,” both duo performances with the Israeli experimental vocalist Victoria Hanna; and the multi-media “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” with Poland’s Quartet Jorgi and the Berlin-based filmmaker Hiroko Tanahashi. “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” toured the United States in spring 2004. Upcoming projects include a coveted residency/fellowship at Princeton University’s Artists’ Atelier.

For the past twelve summers, Mariana Sadovska has traveled to villages in the Poltava, Polissia, Hutsul, and Lemko regions of Ukraine to collect folk songs and rituals. In each village she has cultivated deep relationships with elder culture bearers whose lives, songs, and stories, have inspired much of her recent work. In 1993 she organized a large expedition to Ukraine with an international group of artists, musicians, and researchers. In November-December 2001, she helped organize the second annual Festival “Ukraine-Poland-Europe” at the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices for which she brought village singers together with artists working on the cutting edge of contemporary performance practice.

Altmaster (Poland) recorded Mariana Sadovska’s vocal work for Gardzienice’s “Metamorfozy” in 2000. In June 2001, Global Village Music in the United States released “Songs I Learned in Ukraine,” a CD of Sadovska’s modern interpretations of favorite songs gathered from her Ukrainian village expeditions. Later that year, in collaboration with Radio Lublin (Poland), Yara Arts Group (USA), UNESCO, and other international sponsors, she produced “Song Tree,” a collection of polyphonic folk songs sung by village elders from Polissia and Poltava.

Mariana Sadovska believes in music as a “living dialogue” between the performer and the listener. She comments:

“I do not sing songs I found in books. Each song I sing was given to me by a specific woman…I heard the story of the song…I learned the way it should be sung and when…I understand that a song can be the way…the map which leads you to your life.”

Jack Carpenter, Lighting Designer

Freelance Lighting Design

• Oakland Ballet; Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley Repertory Theatre; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Concord Pavilion, and Theater Artaud. Additional lighting design work with national tours at the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Michigan Opera House, Summerstage in Central Park, Wexner Center, Jacobs Pillow, Walker Arts Center, Buell Theatre, Lyceum Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Disney World Dolphin Hotel Ballroom. European tour in Nancy Festival, Nancy, France. Also lighting for fashion shows for Girbaud, Ralph Davies/Comme des Garcons, and Jeanne/Marc

Production Manager

Theater Artaud, San Francisco (1986-1995)

Awards

• Four Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for outstanding lighting design for: Angels in America, (co-design with Jim Cave), The Eureka Theatre (1991); Pickup Axe, The Eureka Theatre (1991); Fen, Eureka Theatre Company (1985); and Walking Home, Motion/Nina Wise (1984)
• Four Isadora Duncan Awards for visual design for: Never Less Alone, Zaccho Dance Theatre (1997); Take/Place, Joe Goode Performance Group (1994); Kristalnacht, Nancy Karp and Dancers (1993); and In Steel’s Shadow, Zaccho Dance Theatre (1993).

Selected Design Credits

• Beauty Queen of Leenane, Berkeley Repertory Theatre (1999)
• Collected Stories, Berkeley Repertory Theatre (1998)
• Invisible Wings, Zaccho Dance Theatre, Exterior work at Fort Point in San Francisco and Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts (1998)
• Deeply There, Joe Goode Performance Group, San Francisco (1998)
• The Mexiterminator Project, Guillermo Gomez Peña (1998)
• Aria for an Endangered Species, Ellen Bromberg (1998)
• Never Less Alone, Zaccho Dance Theatre (1997)
• The Nutcracker, Detroit Symphony (1996, 1997)