By Anna Malpas
From incense sticks in metro kiosks to the bestselling books of Haruki Murakami, the fashion for all things Eastern is hard to ignore. This week, a festival of Tibetan culture offers Muscovites a taste of a more authentic East, inviting sculptors, dancers and even an practicing astrologer to take part in events.
Opening in the Apple Hall of the Zurab Tsereteli Arts Gallery on Thursday, the festival will run at various locations till the end of the month, concluding with an exhibition of photographs by Buddhist actor Richard Gere.
An initiative of the recently founded Tibetan House in Moscow and of Monks-Art, a company that has brought Tibetan monks to Russia for exhibits and concerts over the last five years, the festival’s aim is “to make Tibetan culture accessible to ordinary people,” art director Igor Yancheglov said in an interview. The organizers met the Dalai Lama to propose the project, which is already being touted as an annual event.
The largest show of Tibetan culture ever held in Russia, the festival is headed by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, home to Europe’s only ethnic Buddhist group. Also on the board of patrons are sculptor Tsereteli and rock musician Andrei Makarevich of Mashina Vremeni.
Tibetan culture is growing fashionable in Russia, said Yancheglov, a musician whose interest in the region stretches back many years. There are several Buddhist communities in Moscow, some made up of ethnic Russians in their mid-20s, others composed of immigrants from the country’s Buddhist republics of Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia.
Yet the culture of Russia’s own Tibetan Buddhists will not be featured in the festival, since these people “have almost lost their Buddhist roots” as a result of the Soviet regime, Yancheglov said.
Most of the events on the festival program will be shown in Russia for the first time, including Gere’s personal exhibition of 60 black-and-white photographs of Tibetans, due to open Oct. 29 at the Tsereteli Gallery. The actor has confirmed his presence at the opening, Yancheglov said.
Ten monks from the Gyudmed tantric monastery in India will create 2-meter-high sculptures from butter. The monastery, originally located in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, has specialized in this art form for 300 years. Traditionally, Tibetans would donate to monasteries gifts of butter from their yak herds. The monks would then sculpt and color it to create beautiful offerings. At the end of the festival, the sculptures will be given to Buddhist shrines in Kalmykia.
Another group of monks will set to work on a large mandala, a circular design made from fragments of variously colored marble. Visitors will be able to watch the process, as well as the mandala’s destruction on Oct. 30 — a demonstration of the Buddhist belief in the world’s essential impermanence.
The festival will also feature Tibetan refugees at the Moscow International House of Music in a performance of traditional folk dances and songs, while an astrologer from an institute of Tibetan medicine and astrology in Dharamsala, India — home of the Dalai Lama — will provide visitors to the Tsereteli Gallery with horoscope readings.
Organizers are already planning next year’s event, which is expected to concentrate on Tibetan music. The third festival, in 2006, will focus on films about Tibet, Yancheglov said.
The Tibet Festival runs Thurs. to Oct. 31 at various venues. For details, see the Events Calendar and the festival’s website www.tibethouse.ru
