Ville Haapasalo in Mari-El

Last Sunday, I discovered this charming TV series by Ville Haapasalo, a Finnish actor who has become quite a celebrity in Russia. "Suomensukuiset 30 päivässä" (The Finnic Relatives in 30 Days) documents his travels along the Volga and around the Ural Mountains in search for the Finno-Ugric minorities in this area of the Russian Federation. The first episode started in Kazan, the Republic of Tatarstan, and continued to a village in Mari El, also a federal republic but with considerably less cultural power for the minority people whose name it bears.

Visiting the holy grove - moving stories and memorable faces of the Mari people.

The Mari identity builds on the Mari language and the unique, syncretist Mari religion. 43.9 % of the Mari El population identifies as Mari, but only 6 % of the population practices the traditional religion. Ville Haapasalo is invited to witness and participate in Mari rituals - the baptism of a baby and a visit to a holy grove. Trees are the spiritual bridge between deities of the Earth and the Sky for the Mari. They convey prayers and energy to the worshiper. For Finnish-speakers, it is interesting to note that the Mari word for deity is jumo - related to the Finnish word jumala.

 A fuzzy doggy joins Ville's spontaneous breakfast in a park in Yoshkar-Ola.

Filming was only allowed at the market in the presence of this handsome guard and a friendly guide.

I don't know if this dried apricot merchant is a local or a Central Asian, but he looks cute. Ville was ecstatic about the apricots but was embarrassed when the guide insisted on paying. "We come from a capitalist country!" Nice try, Ville.

Young men at the market. There were a lot of striking smiles in this programme.

More sweet smiles. In the park, Ville discussed the future of the Mari language with the theater director Vasily. Do the young people speak Mari? With theater productions and folk dance at the university, Mari cultural workers try to revitalize interest in their cultural heritage.

 

 

 

 

A dance troupe at the university.

Those smiles again!

The Mari dances were interesting - while the music often reminds of Tatar folk music, the steps look completely different in my eyes (and the costumes of course). It also seems that while dancing in pairs, the dancers do not hesitate to wrap their arm around the partner's waist ;) But of course there are many local differences and I suggest to look around on YouTube for a better idea of Mari folk dances. Like here or here... (with some modern music too)

The archers' dance was fascinating.

Marij, marij, kuš kajet? Mari, Mari, where are you going? I was honestly moved to tears many times during this programme. Ville will be continuing his travel, too - in the next episode he will visit Udmurtia and meet the famous grannies, Buranovskiye Babushki, who put up a tough but heartwarming fight against the overproduced pop starlets of the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku last year. Better have your hankies ready!

The Spring Stream

Young men and women gather by a spring stream and act out a funny pantomime. Hyperactive Volga Tatar dance performed by the Gaskarov Folk Dance Company in Bashkortostan.

Langston Hughes in Central Asia

Thanks to the blog Moscow Through Brown Eyes, I was inspired to dig up some nice photos of American poet Langston Hughes' travels in early 1930's Soviet Central Asia. The Yale University Library has an online exhibition of Hughes' life (1902-1967) for starters.

In 1932, Hughes boarded the S/S Europa with a group of African-American actors and writers on their way to the Soviet Union. Their purpose was to make a film about the plight of black people in the United States, but after long and fruitless meetings with the Soviet producers, the whole project was scrapped.

Hughes took the chance to travel around Soviet-controlled Central Asia, areas that usually were not accessible to Westerners but that interested him for personal and political reasons. Hughes wanted to find a positive example of a "coloured South" to contrast with the Jim Crow south of the US. He met African-American engineers involved in the modernization of the Soviet cotton industry. He also met the Hungarian intellectual Arthur Koestler, who at the time was a member of the Communist party, but had already begun to develop his critical eye for the system. Hughes was a Communist sympathizer, although no party member - for him the dream of racial equality was so important that he preferred to look away from the harsh realities of famine and oppression. His self-critical period would come later, after WW2.

That said... maybe he was just dazzled by all the chirayliq guys he met on his travels?

From Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Langston Hughes collection. Described as "Group photograph of unidentified men and women in Russia, possibly Uzbekistan". See the larger original here.

Young writers of Central Asia, Hughes in the middle. On the backside of the photo there are descriptions in Cyrillic, which the library hasn't bothered to decipher.

Hughes' surprise traveling companion, Arthur Koestler. View the whole image here, plus chicken. Apparently Koestler heard someone play jazz records (this article claims it was Sophie Tucker singing "My Yiddishe Mamme") at a guesthouse in Ashqabat and knocked at the door; imagine his astonishment to find the poet whose works he had admired already in Europe.

Karim Ahmadii is perhaps the name of this man who dedicated his portrait to Hughes in 1933.

This is what Hughes wished to see - a coloured man and a white man shaking hands. His superficial view of Soviet race relations is problematic but understandable from today's perspective. The photo is titled "Yusuf Nichanov".

Back in the United States, Hughes wrote an article on traditional Uzbek dance for Travel Magazine.

He especially admired the "teacup dance", which he simply called "raks" (from raqs, dance), and was intrigued by the batcha - danging boys dressed and made up like women. (More on traditional Uzbek dance here.)

And in case you thought Hughes only had an eye for the guy, here's Tamara Khanum, dancing teacher, first woman to perform without the veil in Uzbekistan. The fate of her colleague Nurkhon shows what a brave act this was.

Langston Hughes wrote about his travels in A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, a short book reprinted as recently as 2006 in Bishkek. There is an interesting discussion about Hughes and the re-publication at the Registan blog.

Rudolf Nureyev

Here comes the long awaited post about Rudolf Xämät ulı Nuriev, as his name is written in Tatar. Our mum is a huge fan, so we've grown up watching him dance. Here is one of his many famous performances, a male solo from Swan Lake:



Nureyev was the youngest of four children and the only boy. His family were originally poor Tatar peasants, but his father Hamet had seized the opportunity that came with the revolution, and had become a political education officer in the Soviet Army. When he was stationed in Vladivostok, his wife Farida and her daughters travelled to join him. On the train, somewhere near the Baikal lake in March 1938, Rudolf was born.



When war broke out, Farida and the children were evacuated from Moscow to Ufa in the Urals, and that is where Rudolf grew up. With Hamet away at war, times were hard, and the Nureyevs were very poor. When Rudolf started school, the other children laughed at him because he had no shoes and his coat was a hand-me-down from his older sisters. I remember a much watched video tape with Nureyev on the Dame Edna show, where he explained that the scar on his lip came about when he was a child and was so thin that he looked like a bone, so a dog tried to eat him ...

On New Year’s Eve, 1945, Farida smuggled all her children into a performance of the patriotic ballet Song of the Cranes starring the Leningrad-trained Bashkir ballerina Zaituna Nazretdinova. Rudolf knew at once that he wanted to become a dancer.

He started to take lessons in local folk dances and ballet. When his father returned from the war, he was not at all pleased with his son's "unmanly" interests, but Rudolf had already set his mind to it.

His teachers saw great potential in him, and encouraged him to study in Leningrad. Eventually, while on tour with a local ballet company, Rudolf applied to the Bolshoi ballet company in Moscow and was accepted. But he felt that the Leningrad school would be better (also because it was residential, so he wouldn't have to worry about paying for housing), so instead of returning home to Ufa with his company he headed to Leningrad.



He auditioned at the Leningrad school and was accepted, with the comment "you'll become either a brilliant dancer or a total failure - and most likely a failure". Rudolf was now 17 - a very old age for enrolling at a formal ballet school. He trained extremely hard to catch up, but he also broke school rules and snuck out of the dorms to watch performances at the Kirov ballet. In any case, he obviously did not become a failure.

When he graduated from the school, he was so good that he was offered a soloist contract by both the Kirov and Bolshoi ballets. In the end, and perhaps to no surprise, he chose the Kirov ballet.



He continued to be both brilliant, making his own interpretation of every ballet he danced, and difficult, arguing with choreographers and teachers and walking out on them to train by himself.


Nureyev dancing Le Corsaire with Alla Sizova. From the collection of Sergei Sorokin.


Nureyev with Nadia Nerina. According to the Telegraph, "she impressed and humbled Rudolf Nureyev when he attempted to show off in a performance of Giselle with a series of 16 entrechats six (jumps with rapid changes of feet). Performing Swan Lake a few nights later, with Nureyev watching from the stalls, Nadia Nerina doubled his feat to 32 — an unheard-of achievement for a female dancer — and a furious Nureyev stormed out of the performance."

When the Kirov company went on tour to Paris in 1961, Nureyev caused a lot of trouble for the political agents running the tour, who were probably under a lot of pressure since he as such a great dancer was such a valuable asset to the Soviet Union. He didn't feel like going straight back to the hotel after the performances, but went out on the town with the French dancers and hung out with the locals.

The company was supposed to continue its tour to London, but Nureyev was instead handed a ticket back to Moscow and told he had to go perform at a gala back in the USSR. He was told that he would rejoin the Kirov company in London afterwards, but he didn't really believe that, and feared that he would never again be allowed out of the Soviet Union. So Nureyev defected.



Upon his defection he was immediately offered an engagement with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.



Soon Nureyev got to meet the dancer Erik Bruhn. They fell in love, and despite a very stormy relationship they remained close until Bruhn's death. Bruhn and Nureyev shared the idea that a male dancer should be allowed to dance just as expressively as a woman, and their style of male dancing would later be taken up by other choreographers.

In 1961 Nureyev also made his first performance in Britain, at a ballet matinée organised by the Royal Ballet's Prima Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. He was offered to join the Royal Ballet, and his first performance with the company was partnering Margot Fonteyn in Giselle.



Thus began a lasting partnership and friendship between the two.



Nureyev was a quick learner, and amassed an unusually large and varied repertoire. He danced the old classics in many different variations, and took well over a hundred roles by more than forty choreographers. Many of these roles were created especially for him. His own takes on the classics also led him to make his own productions.

He appeared in cinema, as well, among his roles a racy portrayal of Rudolph Valentino. He also made memorable appearances in the Muppet Show, dancing Swine Lake and being harrassed by Miss Piggy in the sauna ...



Nureyev became ballet director of the Paris Opera in 1983, and brought new life to the Paris Opera by dramatically widening the repertoire, and encouraging the dancers to experience many styles, just like he had.



His love for music led him to conducting, which he could continue with even as his body was wrecked from dancing and his health deteriorated with AIDS.

In March 1992, Rudolf Nureyev, living with advanced AIDS, visited Kazan and appeared as a conductor in front of the audience at Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Kazan. The theater now annually organizes the Rudolf Nureyev Festival in Tatarstan.

Nureyev's last ballet appearance was in 1992, a production of La Bayadère at the Palais Garnier. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Nureyev died in Paris a few months later, at the age of 54.

...

On the Nureyev Wikipedia entry's discussion page someone cites a slightly dubious source with a broken link. In a Russian E-book called The most famous artists of Russia it supposedly says:
“Nureyev, who made Russian ballet famous, was not Russian. [...] Unlike many artists or scientists of those times Rudolf didn’t keep his origin a secret."
Apparently he adopted Russian stereotypes about Tatars to his own enjoyment, because the quote continues: "He was proud of his ethnicity and he really resembled an impetuous and self-willed descendant of Genghis-Khan, as people tended to call him. His ballet-school mates say that on occasions he would emphasise that his ancestors ruled Russians during 300 years.”

P.S. Mum has a huge photo book about Nureyev, so we can expect more of him later ...

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Note: The photos with no captions have been gathered from various random online fangirl collections.

One post is not enough!

The Boston Globe's Big Picture also features photos from the coronation of the Oxford-educated bachelor His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, 28 years old ...


Dancers line up for the crowning ceremony.
Both photos by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images. See more at the Boston Globe!

bhutan-20
Originally uploaded by frans.vanderlee
"Ratu our local guide and Bart
our trip leader pay homage. "

And since we're talking about Bhutan ... In Bhutan, kissing in public is taboo, but on the other hand, it is very common to paint giant phalluses on your house to ward off evil spirits. Phalluses in many other shapes are also used to ward off evil spirits.
The photo on the right is by Frans van der Lee, who has a lovely set of photos from Bhutan at Flickr.

The BBC's Geeta Pandey writes about the origins of Bhutan's phalluses. They can be traced back to the "Divine Madman" Lama Drupka Kinley, who supposedly would hit errant demons over the head with his penis to subdue them and turn them into protective deities.
"But contrary to the popular perception, the phallus has a world of meaning beyond its obvious symbolism to ward off evil influences", says this article from Kuensel, Bhutan's national newspaper, which takes a closer look at the phallic traditions of Bhutan, and their future in the modern society.

Challenge!

How can I match the previous awesome posts by Tinet?
I browsed desperately through Flickr for ideas. There was plenty of the stuff that Chirayliq are made of, including cute and mischievous Jews and cuddly grumpy Arabs (doesn't he look a bit like Adriano Celentano?) and their slightly insane admirers.*)

*) Yes, those are all devoted fans of the young prince of Dubai whom Sweden's crown princess Victoria visited a few months ago. I guess I am a bit insane too. I blame Tintin comics, they always had lots of cute swarthy Arabs running about in flowing robes. The stereotype totally backfired. Just look at this guy... mashallah!

But what really took the cake was this video found through the always entertaining desi blog Sepia Mutiny (!). Giju John (33) was born i Thiruvananthapuram, India, and is now an engineer in Silicon Valley. He also dances a mean salsa - Hindi style.



Watch out for the cute East Asian couple's acrobatic routine right before the end!