Mémoire d'un vieux tzigane
creation 2012-2013
Synopsis
Petia, a choreographer and Gipsy dance teacher, lives and works in Paris. After a long rehearsal day of his last creation, he goes back home. To his great surprise, his childhood friend, Motia, with her husband, Sacha, a guitar player, calls on him. Since their studies at the “Romen Theater” in Moscow, she became a famous Gipsy singer. All along the evening, the three friends will celebrate their great reunion by singing several songs, which awake Petia’s memories and his creative “madness”.
Pétia IOURTCHENKO
"Through dance, theater, songs and today’s gipsy music, I make a point in celebrating my people and fulfilling a duty of memory. I think it important for my people, for French people and for all European countries where Gypsies live. I want, through this creation, to recall “Rrom” people’s painful past, a people that was, as the Jewish people, exterminated (samaduripen) during WW2 by the Nazis."
"This show is in keeping with my ambition, as an artist, to preserve and transmit the liveliness of Gipsy culture by dancing. Since 1994, I have put all my soul, my guts and my heart in this mission, in order to make the youth take an interest in it and that my people’ s culture keep on living through ages. I hope that, thanks to my creations, the impression of the Gipsy people progresses in the good way, the one of respect. I think that knowing the history of my people can lead to this respect."
"I invite Matriona IANKOVSKAÏA, a famous gipsy singer, whose purity and depth of the voice touch me deep down in my soul, and also her guitar playing husband Sacha VALLAYES."
PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY
PÉTIA IOURTCHENKO
