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Producer: Alexandra Maleeva
Images by Thierry Bal for Collectors Agenda and Olga Kotilevskaya
‘…Visitors were invited to throw their coins at me, trying to hit my face. This is a performance based on a story about Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich, who in the late 1930s spent every night anticipating his arrest. (Just like many of the political activists in Russia or Belarus in the most recent history.) Every night at 10pm, after sending his 3-year-old daughter Galya to sleep, he would pack a small suitcase with a pair of warm socks, warm underwear and a golden coin that his daughter gave to him, then leave the apartment and sleep on the staircase of the building using the suitcase as a pillow. Early in the morning, before Galya would wake up, Shostakovich went back to his bedroom and pretended that nothing was amiss. He spent an entire year doing this while (he didn’t want his daughter to see him being arrested) working on the published version of his ballet “The Bright Stream”— hence the title, “The Bright Stream (after Shostakovich)”. Maybe this coin saved his life.
