Russian Folk Dancing

Above is a picture of the concert hall at which we saw a Russian folk dancing performance. The blogger is awfully fickle about layout, so I got stuck with one picture at the top.

Thursday night was another excursion; this time to a folk dancing show. The hall was really pretty and our seating on the top floor was interesting: one chair in front of another in a ring around the building (see below). I liked it. It meant that there wasn't really anyone directly blocking my view of the stage, which was nice.

The performance can be summed up in one word: amazing. As a former "dancer", I know how hard it can be to get about 30 people to do the same move at the same time. Not only did they master this with the utmost precision, they had crazy formations where you were sure that any second they were all going to run into each other and crash to the floor. Except they didn't, of course. All of the dances were bright and festive and really gave color and life to the Russian culture. It was cool to see the stereotypical Russian folk dance; the one where the men have their arms folded in front of them and they kick their legs out in front of them. The men and women were crazy talented and it made me really miss dancing. It was full of social commentary as well. All the village men were basically drunk the whole time and the women were constantly avoiding their advances and chastising them for their public drunkenness. Which, I think, is pretty accurate. People drink beer here all the time (pretty much exclusively men though), no matter the time of day. The earliest I've seen so far is noon, although we watched a Russian movie in class where they had vodka with breakfast, so who knows. The life expectancy for men and women is vastly different (women live almost 15 years longer on average!), which is why you see so many babushkas and very seldom old men. The problem is, they basically drink and smoke themselves to an early death. And on top of that, Russian food isn't the healthiest (very heavy on the saturated fats). Women smoke as well, but it doesn't seem to be to the extent that men do. Essentially, the liklihood that you'll end up a widow is 100%, which is kind of sad, although I'm sure some remarry.

In the second half of the show, one of the drunk men passes out in the street at night and has a drunken dream where he goes to hell. This was definitely the coolest part of the show. This whole dance in hell (the men were these devily-looking rat things and the women were like evil nymphs) was absolutely AMAZING. They were doing things that constantly had my jaw dropping. The whole performance was full of such energy, I kept marvelling at how they could keep it up for so long, especially because the dancing was so intense (they were doing flips and jumps etc.). I wish I could have taken video. Karina did and I kinda wish I had them so I could show you all. I especially wish that Derek could have been there since some of the costumes reminded me of Kyrgyzstan. All in all, it's one of my favorite excursions yet.

On Tuesday, we went to the Tretyakov Gallery, but I missed the second floor, so I am going back with Theo today. We are also going to the sculpture garden at the modern Tretyakov. After that, we are going to an Azerbaijani restaurant. I hope it's good! Theo is notoriously slow at museums, so I am bringing my sudoku in case I end up retreating to the museum cafe (which is super cosy by the way).

One more exciting piece of news, which probaby only my fellow language nerd friends will appreciate: I am learning so much vocab constantly, it's hard to keep up. Andrew has been really dilligent in making lists and I started to feel bad. I went to a book store down the street (called Книги haha) and I found a notebook specifically for vocabulary learning! The pages are divided down the middle, so it's easy to make lists with their definitions. It has the word Слова on the front in cool font as well. And... now for perhaps the best part... it cost ONLY 1 ruble and 50 kopeks!!! 25 rubles are in a dollar, so you can image how cheap that is!! I bought two. :) Now I can be even more Type A! haha