Yes, Tak; Notes at the End of the Orange Revolution
Take your gold, your silver
Rich, affluent be,
But I’ll choose the tears –
To pour out my grief;
Drowning all misfortune
As I gently weep,
Stamping out all fetters
With my naked feet.
- Katerina, Taras Shevchenko
Christina Bodnar, a Ukrainian Canadian grad student, arrives in Ukraine in 2007 to teach ESL. Discovering that post-Orange Revolution Ukraine is the not the “old country” of her cultural classes, she encounters a youth culture at once hopeful of a democratic future and deflated by recent revolutionary failures. Incorporating an original musical score, choreography, and multimedia, this interdisciplinary performance dramatises Christina’s navigation of cultural differences, folkloric grief, and budding relationships in a fractured Ukraine.
Based in Kingston, SWAY Collective is a multidisciplinary arts group which was founded in 2010. Focusing on the youth culture of both Ukraine and the Diaspora in Canada, the performance will be a collaboration of Breanne Oryschak as writer, director, and choreographer; Janna-Marynn Brunnen as set designer and technician; Ashley Vanstone as composer and music director; and Claire Grady-Smith as marketing and communications specialist. Yes, Tak will be performed April 24th, 25th, and 26th, 2014, at 7pm, at the Baby Grand, Grand Theatre in Kingston.
http://www.swaycollective.org/
Tickets are $20.00 plus handling fee, general admission.