We are non-profit organization Kirbutsirkus (choreographer Katrin Essenson and scenographer Liina Keevallik), and this spring we are organizing the May Lily Days festival of playful arts for the 8th year already. The festival offers its performers a chance to bring to the stage a act, concert, performance or whatever kind of art form – something they have always dreamed about, but never had a chance or courage to do before.
The festival was initiated by our dear friend, the too-early departed leader of Eriti Kurva Muusika Ansambel (Ensemble of Especially Sad Music), Sven Kuntu. His close circle of friends have become the regular performers at May Lily Days: the musicians of MKDK (Estonian Bad Dream Big Band, Paul Cole), the group Nagu Naine Oleks Kodus, and Mart Kampus, Taavi Kerikmäe, Villu Plink & Silja Saarepuu, and others. In the course of years such performers as Peeter Volkonski, RAM, P.I. Filimonov, Kiwa, Marko Mägi, Weekend Guitar Trio, Mart Koldits, Ene Rämmeld, Aleksei Turovski, and Vormsi Enn have joined the festival. Last year cooperation between artists and scientists was initiated, which continues in full swing.
The keyword of this year’s festival is tolerance. Strange things have been happening with tolerance lately – in Estonia as well as in the wide world. The one who cannot stand humour chooses to kill the joker, the one who’s straight tries to press the square ”back into the closet”, the other beheads representatives of different faith and the third sends refugees back to the hotbed of war… The world is a nervous wreck.
May Lily Days approach this subject in every possible angle. Different appearances of tolerance are closely examined – from a strangely behaving relative and a wrong-coloured animal to a repulsive smell coming from neighbour’s apartment and a bluish boiled egg. Experiments take place where white turns black.
Following questions are thrown into air:
What happens when an explicit man meets an ambiguous subject?
What happens when a weirdly shaped bench meets a normal buttock?
What happens when a tolerant bloodhound meets a weird sweater?
Etc...
As the subject of tolerance is global, our festival opens its doors to foreign performers. The festival headliner is Dakh Daughters, a seven-member band of actresses from Ukraine. The troupe that is sensational in Europe at the very moment has grown out of the famous Dakh Theatre. Their striking performance is staged by Vladislav Troitskyi who is also the initiator of GogolFest, the most popular Ukrainian theatre festival.
On the stage, Dakh Daughters create an atmosphere of a French lounge where Mireille Mathieu becomes friends with Marilyn Manson. Their performance combines fierce energy and rebellious spirit with pure poetry, bringing together Ukrainian folksongs, rock, rap and exceptional acting skills. The actresses themselves call it a ”freak cabaret”, but the audience probably sees it as an ingenious cabaret, for each actress plays every instrument and sings in every possible language, plus they change their roles as if these were mittens. Dakh Daughters have found inspiration for the lyrics of their out-of-this-world songs in classical Ukrainian poetry and fragments of old popular hits. They also use their own texts, and many of the lyrics that adorn their most peculiar musical pieces are written by Tarass Shevtshenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Josef Brodsky, Charles Bukowski and Aleksander Vedenskyi. The hit song Rozy / Donbass, for instance, is actually a sonnet by Shakespeare. In 2013 Dakh Daughters also took part in the Euromaidan protest demonstration.
The concert takes place on May 23 at 7 pm at the Russian Theatre.
The expenses of bringing the whole band to Estonia are quite high, but their participation – their concert-performance as well as their attendance at the whole festival – is vital in the context of this year’s festival theme. The festival ends with a contest of protest songs, where the audience can experience a more personalized dissection of the subject of tolerance.
We hereby need support to open our doors to foreign quests, to help our Ukrainian visitors and to boost our festival of playful arts.
In return we can offer VIP complimentary tickets to all the events within the program of our festival and a chance – for those who are interested – to take part of the protest songs contest or to stand up with their own tolerance-themed act on our festival stage.
Please visit our homepage www.kirbutsirkus.com for further information.
