Fragments from Dancing in Russia after The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Soon after the fall of Communism I worked with a group of dancers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I was barely twenty.
We met in Moscow’s Palace of Culture. There was a grand foyer with marble floors, a giant chandelier, and a mural of workers in a field wearing red bandanas. Across the street was a church that had survived every attempt to dismantle it. The builders had mixed eggs with cement. Indestructible it turns out.
After our first rehearsal, we took a lunch break. The Palace of Culture boasted a large white tiled cafeteria. Everyone ate the same thing. As we waited patiently for our boiled dumplings, a dancer, Slava, whispered with urgency: “I can tell you do Contact Improvisation. I also do Contact Improvisation. Underground dancing. If the Red Government saw anything funny they would put you in the crazy-house. Friends died dancing Contact Improvisation.”
“Died from dancing?”
“Yes, anti-Soviet dancing. Friends died of lethal injection.”
After lunch Slava asks if we can practice Contact Improvisation together. He has never danced Contact Improvisation with someone who is not Russian. He knows that Contact Improvisation comes from America but I soon learn he has only seen photographs smuggled into Russia — photographs of American dancers with bare feet, in sweat pants, practicing Contact Improvisation in Soho lofts. Contact is a dance that flows from following a moving point of touch between two moving bodies. But when Slava and my bodies touch, he freezes. I begin to move again but instead of flowing through motion, Slava shifts into a new static shape. I flow. Slava freezes: his head in contact with my shoulder. I flow. He is still: offering his back under mine. I try to continue the momentum but Slava simply shifts into one new shape after another. Then I remember he has only seen photographs of Contact Improvisation. Slava and his friends could not imagine the motion behind the images.
There are many Palaces of Culture in Russia. We rehearse in six of them. All have grand entryways but the bathroom floors are flooded with brown water. Each bathroom stall holds a few old books with red or green cloth covers. You tear off a page or two. We visit one exception, a pristine palace cared for by a woman in her fifties who greets us at the front door by admonishing everyone to remove our shoes. Her bathrooms are impeccable.
Boris offers to drive me around Moscow. He is a tall and willowy musician in black jeans and a blue sweater, the father of four girls. As he drives he tells us he adores improvisational music, free jazz, especially the music of Anthony Braxton, but he cannot convince his Muscovite peers “raised on Russian composers and folk music” that Braxton’s discordant sounds are “legitimate.” He understands their fear:
“I remember finally seeing the movie ‘Oliver.’ I felt shame seeing this. The musician in me thought it was wonderful but the scared Russian in me thought ‘Singing instead of talking? How can they do this?!’ The same when Paul Simon came to Moscow. The harmonies, the costumes – I was embarrassed — I thought it was cheap. ‘You can’t have these harmonies!’ but in my heart I knew it was great.”
In Soviet times, Boris played free jazz in his flat “for four walls and four walls only.” But then his neighbor reported his anti-Soviet music to the authorities and the KGB interrogated him and his wife. I remember Boris saying his wife was imprisoned as a result, but I didn’t write it down in my journal so I struggle now to believe that could actually be true. I definitely remember asking: “What would you say to American artists who say all our choices are political?” I recorded his answer:
“Before I played music only for my four walls. For four walls and no one else. You knew whatever you did would have no outcome. It was only for yourself. That’s why now I need an outcome. Before I could maybe play for twelve people but all performance became an act of protest, only an act of protest. Now, we are sick of politics and protest. Just make art to make art – Why be so special?”
In St. Petersburg, we perform the dance we have made together – me, Slava, and twelve other dancers. Near the end of the performance I lead the dancers in a drifting procession out of the park. Two young soldiers in grey uniforms stand directly in my path. As I slowly inch closer, one soldier moves aside, pleading in Russian with his friend to do the same. But the soldier does not move. He stands facing me, eyes straight ahead, motionless. I decide he wants to become a part of this dance, this world we’ve created. As I pass I lightly brush his arm, I feel the warmth of his cheek as he gently leans in to touch mine. Like ghosts we pass through each other.
After I return from Russia, the ruble looses 100% of its value. Businesses close. Stores run out of popular items and there are food shortages. I write in my journal something my young Russian translator told me: she didn’t care about Russia — why should she “when everyone here is so apathetic. We all know Russia will survive anything. We have been through the worst and survived.”