Kleines Haus 10 June at 19.30 h 11 June at 19.30 h

Text
Mark Weil,
Dmitry Tikhomirov

Director
Mark Weil
Choreography
David Rousseve
Composer
Artem Kim
Set design
Bobur Ismailov
Video art
Evgeniy Padalkin
Assistant director
Maxim Tumenev

Cast

Aleksandr Vasilevich Nezhdanov, the painter.
His second name, a pseudonym, is � Usto.
Anton Pakhomov
Valerian Petrovich Byaltsev: The Colonel
later Pavel Kibirev
Boris Gafurov
Sergey Vladimirovich Zvyagintsev, the Colonel�s adjutant
Nikolay Leonov
Vasiliy Skoroukhin: Lance corporal, batman to the Colonel
Pavel Lukashenko
Alisher
Denis Boiko
Salakhutdin
Jakhongir Shakhobitdinov
Makhmud
Sayid Chudaibergenow
Karim
Vladimir Yudin
Nodira, girl-bocha
Nargis Abdullaeva
Takhir: a former bocha and owner of the Choi-Khona (Uzbek Tea-house)
Farukh Khaldjigitov
Frau des Oberst Byaltsew,
Elena Wladimirowna Byaltsew
Honoured Actress of Uzbekistan Marina Turpisheva
Eine Frau aus der alten Stadt (Muslimischer Teil der Stadt)
Nargis Abdullaeva

Production
Mark-Weil-Theater Ilkhom, Tashkent

www.ilkhom.com

Ecstasy with a pomegranate

Fantasy on the vanished time and the paintings of the artist Alexander Nikolaev (Usto Mumin)
Duration: appr. 170 minutes, one interval

Every night Alexander is drawn to an Uzbek teahouse in the old part of Tashkent, where he watches the ecstatic male bodies of young dancers and experiences a state of euphoria. He puts the men into his paintings, until the door to the fragile world of the dervishes is shut for him by a brutal murder at the teahouse. Alexander has disrespected the law of Islam, which forbids images of humans. The painter�s dramatic escape is shown as a series of theatrical images which combine historical facts and fiction: the painter Alexander Nikolaev is a historical figure. He survived the whirl of the collapsing Russian Empire under the pseudonym Usto Mumin. The actors from Tashkent present fragments of pictures, letters, diary entries, photographic documents and eye-witness accounts, grouped around the painter�s most famous work, �Ecstasy with a Pomegranate�. The garden of happiness, into which the painter escaped, is revived in this fascinating fantasy, and for the first time the audience is allowed to witness the �batcha dance�, forbidden for a long time.

In Russian with German subtitles.
There will be an audience talk after the performance on 11 June. Admission free.

The project is supported by the Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project: a programme administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable foundation, and the Ford Fondation.
Also supported by The Embassy of the United States of America.