Clown Trips: Russia, November 2006
23rd Annual Gesundheit! Russia Clown Trip
During the two week Gesundheit! and MIR Russia Clown Tour, November, 2006. 34 clowns, ages 13-77, from 11 countries, along with our Russian friends, visited hospitals, chronic care facilities, and private homes in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We clowned for and with orphans, the sick, the deaf and blind, the infirm, and their caregivers. There was an abundance of tears and laughter. Many new friendships were made, and old friendships deepened. Two art auctions raised money to support the work of our dear friends Maria and Marina, as they continue to rescue Russian orphans, one at a time.
Friday, the clowns divided into two groups. Our group visited the Psychoneuro Internat No. 25, a chronic care facility comprised of many separate "units." Some were recognizable as "typical" nursing homes, for men or women, and others as long term psychiatric care units. Two years previous, I had visited a locked men's ward, and this year I wanted to return. After fiddling and clowning on an elderly women's ward ( babuschkas!!!!), I joined up with Berit, a Danish clown. Off we went to find the locked men's psychiatric ward.
We wandered through the labyrinth of this sprawling complex of rooms, wards and hallways, not taking any particular direction. Bypassing a big clown party in a large activities room, we walked up 3 flights of stairs. Turning the corner we saw a woman standing beside a locked gate. She turned the key, beckoned to us to come, and swung the gate slowly open into a long dimly-lit hallway. I began a fiddle tune and Berit began a steady rhythm on her rattle, as we were led slowly over the threshold.
Faces appeared from doors along the hallway. Curious, twenty to thirty women stepped from their rooms into the corridor, moving toward the music. They were mostly middle aged to elderly, though a few were young, like a bald, thin, almost toothless young woman wearing a smock. Barefoot, she ran, spinning, laughing, leaping up and down the hall. Berit in the lead, we formed a loose caravan, the women moving closer to the music, dancing, arms outstretched, hands and arms moving rhythmically, heads tilting, bobbing. Slowly the procession moved down the hallway, drawing in new dancers; all of us participants in an unfolding ancient agreement: the mystery of musician and dancer.
I was playing spontaneously, improvising. All my library of Appalachian fiddle tunes vanished and emerged somehow new and old at the same time, a lilting, urgent call to the dance. No words were spoken except by the lone staff person, a stoutly built matriarch calling out orders meant to stop those women who were so moved by the music that they felt the need to touch the violin, the fiddler's hands. This didn't stop them. They touched gently, reverently, and danced around the musicians, now in an open room halfway down the corridor. A television played in the corner, and those sitting nearby turned from the TV screen to the music. Some were drooling or rocking or staring at the floor. We moved slowly around the room; the rattle and fiddle music steady, insistent and light.
We engaged each person with eye contact. Every face lit up with a smile, acknowledging us as we did them. Each dancer looked deeply into our eyes. We recognized each face, each person familiar. One solitary woman standing tall, aloof against the wall, as we walked by her, tilted her head ever so slowly, queen-like, as if to say "Yes, it pleases us-" A blue-eyed red-haired woman flirted, winked and smiled coyly as she danced, approaching and then shyly dancing away, again and again. An older woman with close cropped black hair shimmied sensually directly in front of me, holding my eyes in her bold gaze, then danced off, and returned again, and again. Her dance, her story. Others danced in concentration, eyes closed, absorbing the music, transported. From the small windows of two locked doors from isolation rooms, two heads peered out, the faces confused, sad, questioning. Berit tenderly caressed one woman's face as she tilted her head, like a dog. The staff person pushed their heads back into the locked rooms. Locked rooms on a locked ward.
All the while without pause the fiddle and rattle wove a spell, and the silent dancers danced. As if all were responding to some hidden signal, spontaneously, slowly, the procession, led by Berit, moved down the hall towards the gate. The dancers moved in and out, touching and kissing my hands, touching and kissing the fiddle, kissing the fiddler on the face, bestowing blessings. We moved slowly, all the while the music flowed like a river. The shimmying dancer placed her comb in my pocket, and kissed me, both cheeks, Russian style. The door swung open; we stepped over the threshold; the door closed; the lock clicked; the music stopped.
Berit and I fell into each others' arms, weeping. We struggled to find words. Somehow we felt we were participants in a great story, in partnership with these women. We felt as if we blessed and were blessed.
I've played music all around the world. I've fiddled square dances on four continents in airports, hotel lobbies, nursing homes, schools, and community centers. I've entertained large and small audiences in auditoriums, at hospital bedsides, in prisons, for the dying, the disabled, the young and old. Yet this experience in a Russian locked psychiatric ward opened me to a more profound level of meaning. It shook me up.
There is a series of painted ceramic tiles at the Basilica de Santa Chiara in Naples, Italy, dating to the 1700's, depicting many scenes of daily life: hunting, fishing, family life, play, farming and music. One tile shows four women dancing while holding flowers over their heads, as a little masked clown plays a fiddle. There is an ancient agreement or understanding between musician and dancer, which is an inheritance to all cultures everywhere throughout human history. It encompasses the most intimate indigenous music played around the hearth on instruments made from wood and sinew, and to the huge public spectacles of ballet and full orchestra. It is exploited for huge profit by a music industry and decried by religious orthodoxies. And on this afternoon, in a ward locked away from the rest of the world, the ancient dream lived yet again. We each disappeared as individuals. We were no longer sick or well, able or disabled. We were players in a deeply human mystery; a story-and oohhh-how we played!!!!
