Mother Earth

Let's hit the rewind button back to one of our last performances in Moscow.

For our second to last performance in Moscow we had the choice of seeing Mother Earth, a movement based performance, or Madea, a performance similar to the shows we've seen previously. As a dancer, I chose to attend Mother Earth and found myself pleased with my decision, but a little disappointed as well.

Mother Earth is an hour long performance based on the story of a mother's love. Her journey is told through body language alone and revolves around the death of her husband, their three sons, and her daughter in law who later becomes pregnant. Two of her sons and husband are shot, another dies in a snowstorm, and her daughter-in-law dies during childbirth leaving her alone with the child. As we watch this mothers trials and tribulations, we are joined by Mother Earth, who circles the stage calmly inserting herself into the scenes as these individuals pass away and monitoring the family.

The use of set itself was very innovative. The set transformed itself with two rolling counters being pushed by the actors, either cutting off the audience from the scene being played out or creating walkways and tables for the actors to work upon. The actors also utilized their basic props, such as wooden tables, water, stones, and empty ammunition shells, to tell their story. The deaths of the two sons and father killed in war were represented through the placement of an empty ammunition shell somewhere within their belongings. As you watch the shell fall and hit the ground, your heart falls alongside it as the actor disappears behind two metal sliding doors with a loud *CRACK*.

I found the movement to be very similar to techniques taught at St. Olaf and therefore I was surprised to discover that they used actors instead of dancers for the performance. Their movements were both technical and expressive, but this is something I have found to be common among Russian actors.

Still, after such a wonderful performance, I found myself feeling empty. The majority of the other nine students who attended the performance were deeply moved and found this performance to be incredible. I was disappointed I wasn't able to join them.... maybe I was focusing too much on analyzing the performance? Or maybe I was just having an "off" night, either way, the performance was spectacular and I have a lot of respect for the actors who took on this project.