According to the old Slavic folkways, rusalki are the seductive spirits of women who have died untimely or unjust deaths, and are thought to mediate between the human realm and animals, agriculture and seasonal cycles. Taken before their time and denied justice on Earth, the rusalki rest uneasily in the dark forests and brackish waters of Eastern Europe, waiting to be appeased by the living.
In the shadow of Chernobyl, members of Kitka, the celebrated female Bay Area vocal ensemble, encountered the startlingly beautiful songs and rituals used by Ukrainian women to commune with and soothe the volatile rusalki.
Working with stage director Ellen Sebastian Chang and the acclaimed Ukrainian-born vocalist and composer Mariana Sadovska, the a cappella group created an evening-length work, "The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds," which premiered in 2005 at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in Oakland. With the release of an album capturing the haunting, often hair-raising music, Kitka is restaging "The Rusalka Cycle" at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, where the production opens a four-day run tonight with a preview performance.
Rather than re-create the original production, Kitka has reconceived the piece, which weaves together traditional lyrics and original music by Sadovska with an instrumental score performed by cellists Jess Ivry and Myra Chaney and percussionist Loren Mach. Since its trip to Ukraine,
the company has undergone a significant transformation, with a turnover of half the vocalists who created the original piece. A former Kitka member returned to fill one position, while the other three are new recruits, including a Ukrainian, a Serbian-American and a Bulgarian. The current lineup consists of nine members.
"The trip informed the structure of the piece, and now we have four performers who weren't part of it, though one new singer was born and raised in Kiev," says Shira Cion, Kitka's artistic director. "It's not so much a surreal travelogue now. We've created something a little more universal, going deeper into the nature of rusalki and the darker sides of womanhood.
"We've also brought to the foreground the theme of living in exile, being in transition or not being able to go home," Cion continues. "I was reflecting on stories I heard in this village from women escaping Chernobyl. My great-grandparents were Jews from Belarus and Ukraine, and they had to flee pogroms. It's an experience that affects many people at many times."
The seeds of the project were planted when Cion went to a 1997 Cal Performances program titled "A Russian Village Festival," which included one song about the rusalki. The imagery and music were so powerful that they stuck with her, and when it came time to decide on a project for a National Endowment for the Arts grant application, the basic concept of a rusalka opera was born. After several false starts, the project really took off when an international search for a composer led to Sadovska.
Now dividing her time between the Ukrainian city of Lviv and Cologne, Germany, Sadovska spent a dozen years doing field research in her homeland, gathering songs and rituals in rural villages. She gained international attention during her decadelong tenure as the composer, music director and principal performer for the prominent Polish experimental theater company Gardzienice, which couples avant garde physical theater with passionate a cappella vocals.
Once she signed on to the rusalka project, Sadovska insisted that Chang and Kitka travel with her to Ukraine to experience the music and rituals firsthand. Though she grew up in Ukraine, she had only a vague notion of the rusalka lore before she did her field research.
"I grew up in Western Ukraine, in the city, so I had an image of the rusalki like a mermaid, a young girl with a fish tail who fell in love with a prince," Sadovska says. "When I started to gather stories and music for my work, I heard that there are villages where people believe in rusalki. They celebrate a big holiday after Easter, Rusalnaja Nedelja, and they believe that during this period the rusalki are coming into the air. Then one week later they need to do a special ritual to force them back to their woods."
A revival of interest in Ukraine's dwindling folk culture has taken root since the nation gained independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union. So when the Kitka entourage arrived in the village of Havronshchyna just in time to witness the ritual, in which the old women of the village lead the rusalki back to their underworld homes, they were part of a throng of observers, including a TV crew from Kiev and several ethnomusicologists.
While thousands of women across the region used to participate in the Provedu Rusalok ritual, the passing of the old generation and the evacuations forced by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster meant that the rusalka songs were on the verge of fading into memory. Sadovska had taught the ensemble several of the rusalka songs, and rather than disrupt the ritual, Kitka's arrival seemed to bolster the grandmothers.
"That was part of the miracle, which makes Kitka different from all the tourists," Sadovska says. "Even though Kitka came from far away, from America, they knew the songs. As the grandmothers were ending a verse, they were so thankful and happy their voices were supported with these young voices. There were a lot of Ukrainian kids and young people who didn't know the verses, and Kitka was trying to teach them as we all walked to the graveyard."
In returning to "The Rusalka Cycle," Kitka is again supporting the grandmothers. The group is also telling its own tale, a story about nine intrepid women who serve as a bridge between worlds with music that's as earthy as it is ethereal, as sensual as it is sublime.
By Andrew Gilbert
Kitka's 'The Rusalka Cycle'
Mercury News
Where: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St.
When: 8 tonight-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $15-$28
Contact: (415) 292-1233, or see www.kitka.org
