2023
Ministry of Loneliness returned to the streets of NYC and Philly to take your loneliness claims. At night, the Minister scribbled them on the cities’ pavements as per tradition.
In the summer, I got to be a part of Esther Neff‘s experimental philosophy/social psychology project, a theater production of “… A Carp Sanctuary” at Ice Factory Festival in NYC.
At the end of each show, audiences chose the ending. One was neutral, we packed and went home. One – aggressive, tomatoes were thrown, at us. And at the last show we got to do the sweetest version – to sing with the audience a song from the show:
“are we a product of it? or is it a product of us? do we have teeth so we can bite it? or do we bite it because we have teeth?
an ideal society is imaginary but in imagining we learn what’s necessary.”
Together with the amazing dancers Mikah Baumrin-Daniels, Nicole Bindler, Sheila Zagar and Susan Reisbord, I also performed in Sheila Zagar’s project on Aging, Care and Sexuality. We were from 20s to 80s in age. More to come!
2022
Ministry of Loneliness came to the streets of Philadelphia, Trenton and NYC to take your loneliness claims. The Minister worked hard and smoked a lot! Then very late at night, he chalked bits from the people’s claims on the cities’ pavements.
In other news. My clown felt very cool to be invited to the Disfranchisement Circus by the brilliant Donna Oblongata to play with other weirdos.
2021
I only wanted to learn guitar and songwriting for a solo show, both of which I arguably did, and then… this emerged.
2020
Two shows happened. One before the pandemic and one after. Both outside. Ha.
In February, I spent my time in Bartram’s Garden rehearsing and performing for Jillian Jetton’s Heat Wave.
In September, I created a solo show An Encounter, a 30-min walk with Death for one audience member at a time.
2019
Was a year of working with Sophie Amieva. First, performing in “Medusa Volution: An Unbelievable True Story of Sex, Power and Monsters,” written by her and Susu Bagert, in NYC and Philadelphia. Then doing “Examined Life” at New York’s Prelude festival. Both shows focus on re-examining the history and myths of women through the works of Marija Gimbutas and other female writers, lots of clowning, bouffon, butoh, and storytelling.
I also had the great fortune of working with two other women makers, Annie Wilson and Leah Stein, and performed in their shows at Philadelphia Fringe Festival. With Annie Wilson I learnt a variation of an old practice of keening (or wailing) that made me feel 10 emotional pounds lighter and floating on air.
Me wearing babushka somehow migrated from stage to screen via the web series I wrote, directed and starred in, Things I’d Like to Do Instead of Thinking About Men.
I enjoyed that.
2018
When I think about 2018, performance art is not the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, a feature film Us, Forever Ago that I directed, starred in, and took to different film festivals and screenings throughout 2018. After working on it for 2.5 years. It did involve many of the same elements as performance – being nervous and doing five meditations before each screening, trying to build coherent sentences during Q&A, sharing personal stories with audience members, feeling high.
Conversation as a Project: Masculinity Interviews wasn’t a performance either. And it did feel like one – researching, questioning, setting up space, wanting to be present, connecting, feeling changed. The web page it had been published on stopped existing, and what’s left now is that poorly created pdf of the original page. But it feels fitting somehow.
I graduated as a baby clown from a 100-hr Pochinko clown workshop lead by the incomparable Donna Oblongata.
I acted in a hilarious play “Pestilence: Wow!” at Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
I worked with an amazing Korean choreographer Eunjin Choi and two dancers/movers, Eiko Kawashima, born in Japan, and Efrén Sánchez, originally from Mexico, on a piece called “Misunderdance” for 2018 SOAK festival in New York. We communicated in four different languages and tried really hard to connect.
And finally, I’ve been trying to understand what is this new thing, potentially a solo show, that’s coming in? I’ve done it through writing, talking, daydreaming and three work-in-progress sharings. It still eludes me. For now.
2017
What happened in 2017? I wanted to make work but didn’t have a grand plan or a vision. I was afraid that would scare me off making anything. So I applied to a bunch of places that show theater/dance/stand up/clown and scheduled short performances throughout the year. Below are 10-min works that has arrived and are now conversing with each other. All of them had two starting points – the space I was performing in and what was on my mind at the time of making – was that my 2017’s artistic practice? Also, I talk to audiences in all of them. A lot.
“Research 1” (“Nice and Fresh” performing art series at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia)
Was partly based on my impressions from performing a solo show “Speculum Diaries” at Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2016, and noticing how much my emotional state and self-worth shifted dramatically based on what people were saying about the show, how many people came, what their faces looked like watching the show, etc.
It turned out to be a research on how we see ourselves:
How I see myself.
How others see me.
How the way I present myself affects the way others see me.
How the way others see me affects the way I see myself.
At the very end, I performed 3 dances called “How You See Me” choreographed by: 1 – a close friend; 2 – a total stranger who met me for the first and only time to make this dance; 3 – improvised by me and influenced by how I was seeing myself in the moment.
“Let me tell you about my bodies…” (“4 weeks in January” in Kensington, Philadelphia and Headlong’s First Friday in South Philadelphia)
Was affected the most by the rising social and political consciousness I was noticing in myself and people around me.
I wear a red summer dress and dance outside on a winter night. When I get inside, I draw a diagram and talk about my “bodies”: an immigrant, a slim celebrated body type, a casual racist, somebody who cares, somebody who is afraid, etc.
“I Like Chocolate” (Scratch Night in Fringearts, Philadelphia)
Was about sex, boobs and butt. Or at least that’s how I remember it. This was the official description: “More explorations and experiments into personal identity and who/what makes me think things about myself. Like that I am this and not that. That I am kind and not evil. Or that I look good in jeans and not in hats.” There were panties and a bra left behind.
“Research 2” (“Nice and Fresh” performing art series in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia)
Was a research into the nature of evil and personal responsibility. I had just been back from Moscow. I asked audience members to rearrange the space and sit in one big circle. We were eating Belarusian chocolate and I talked “Friends,” personal history, Mt. Airy as one of the first successfully integrated neighborhoods in America, and translated from “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets” by Svetlana Alexievich.
“Clown with No Name” (The People’s Improv Theater in New York)
Was my first foray into making a clown piece. Because I didn’t know exactly what that meant, I made a piece about that and other things I don’t understand. Like not getting a reply to an email I put a lot of thought and heart into, or people objecting to pubic hair. It was devastatingly bitter.
“3” (Sound Space in West Philadelphia)
Had two parts. First, audience members would pick a fun card with writings like “Your work is a waste of time”, “You are not interesting”, ect. from a pile I offered. I would invite them to sit in front of me and read the words. Then we would look at each other for 30 more seconds. I would say “Thank you”, they – “You’re welcome” and leave. In the second part, I lead a meditation on beaming your unique light. Yeah.
3 was a reference to 3 summer months during which I binge-read on healing, energy mastery, self-love and other things that are too embarrassing to mention.
“Clown with No Name, cont.” (The People’s Improv Theater in New York)
Was about feeling the feelings related to the 2017’s sexual harassment conversation.
In 2017, I was also a part of other artists’ awesome projects. One of them, The Quiet Circus, initiated by David Brick and Maiko Matsushima, and shaped by collaboration with art and social practice curator Mary Jane Jacob, took place every Saturday on Washington Ave Pier in Philadelphia for more than a year. We are looking for ways to bring it back. Stay tuned!
2016
I had met Mira Treatman at Headlong Performance Institute and after graduating we created Rejected Thoughts – an evening of duets and solos centered around “rejected.” We talked and talked at a kitchen table, ate lots of cookies, danced with babushkas on our heads, denying and wrestling with our identities and the past, then laughed and cried about the present. We did that at Philadelphia SoLow Festival and New York’s Dixon Place in June 2016.
In September 2016, I performed an evening-length solo Speculum Diaries at Philadelphia Fringe Festival. During its run I wrote new program notes for each performance describing what I was thinking, feeling or doubting the night before. There was also a permanent quote there by Iris Murdoch: “Love is the very difficult understanding that something other than yourself is real.” During the show I remember my imaginary friends and lovers, sing a song to my vagina, revel in ecstatic jealousy, dance to a Charlie Kaufman’s lecture and a Brigitte Bardot’s song, investigate relaxed sexuality, and long for connection. “Speculum Diaries” is a thing in itself and a beginning of something I don’t know yet what. I am waiting to find out.
2014-2015
Is it theater? Dance/theater? Performance art? Embodied stream of consciousness? Whatever it is, it really started in 2014 when I took a Grotowski-inspired theater workshop with Raina von Waldenburg in New York and Vancouver. That lead to dancing, clowning and performance research at Headlong Performance Institute in 2015. I had never wanted to do theater before.