Baba Yaga – Klusha – Albina Matuzko
~ Who is this girl? ~
By Lisa Davis-Burnett
I saw her show and was captivated. The Baba Yaga show is nothing short of a genius solo performance that holds everyone’s attention for over an hour. The show is experimental, minimalist, artistic and interactive. The character is part witch, part clown, part tantrum-throwing two-year-old… and every bit genuine and adorable.
Baba Yaga’s stage took over the Imbali Dance centre inJohnLarmonieCentre for two showings in December. She will do it again on January 28, and after that, maybe no more (on St. Maarten, anyway). She is on stand-by to possibly perform with Cirque du Soleil, so for this chance, don’t miss it!
But who is this unique clown-artist? I had to know more. After the show, I spoke to Albina and her husband Cor, who she calls her number one fan and biggest supporter. They invited me to visit them at their home on a subsequent day. I found it along the rocky eastern coast of the island where I was welcomed and offered a coffee and became an endless point of fascination for their little dog, the year-old-and-still-very-puppyish King Charles spaniel named “Funny.”
ALBINA, WHO also goes by her clown name Klusha, is just as captivating in person as she is on stage. She seems half her actual age; her smile is bright and her eyes dance and twinkle. In fact, she is so youthful and exuberant; I was surprised to learn she has a grown daughter living inEurope. On the day of my visit, she wore a simple, white sundress embroidered with pink flowers and a bit of lace edging. In fact, in the real world, Albina appears as far from the dark and gloomy Baba Yaga character as possible. But she insists all the aspects of that desperately lonely and misunderstood clown are residing inside her and they are the result of a spiritual journey into her inner self.
Albina is a performance artist in love with the concept of clown, but not the circus clown many of us think of. She explained to me that there is another clown tradition, an older one, a spiritual one. She says, “If you are called to be a clown, you have to let it out.” I told her that she looked so different than she did in the show and she right away said: “It’s the nose.” She explained that the circular clown nose represents the cycles of life and death, regenerated. The nose is considered to be magic. She says when she places the nose on her face, it transforms her. Albina said, “It carries the 360° of all [of] our life and being.” Clearly, I had a lot to learn about clowning.
HER PURSUIT of finding and exploring all the aspects of her inner clown brought Albina to a special place and a special person – Sue Morrison and theInstitute ofCanadian Clowning, located in a little village outside ofToronto. It’s a location that is said to be a place of magic. Morrison had led theatre groups inToronto for many years, including with Richard Pochinko (she was a pupil of his), considered the father of the Canadian clown-training technique, called “Clown through mask.” Those interested can ‘google’ any of the above names and find much more fascinating and entertaining information.
Albina told the story: “After they bought the land and built the rehearsal house there, they found out it had once been a place where Indian shamans performed rituals long ago. Sue built exactly on this place, a little space to train for art performances.” The workshops are in great demand; sometimes teachers or psychologists come, but mostly actors or clowns. And there is a long waiting list of people wanting to come to learn Sue’s unique approach.
“In my group,” Albina shared, “we had 18 and only a few were not clowns, but to work with Sue, she has to want it, she doesn’t work with everybody. It’s a very intense and complicated process; psychologically, it’s very heavy and she is a provocateur. She isn’t someone who says, ‘Oh yeah, it’s great what you are doing.’ No, you are improvising for three hours and she is just sitting there and you can see she is disappointed completely in you. She will even keep you longer for weeks to try to build up something in you.” Albina worked with Sue Morrison for three weeks in this magical place outside ofToronto, and during those weeks, she built masks that reveal aspects of her spirit and soul. She found inner directions and called forth her clown gods.
“THIS CANADIAN approach to clowning comes from the Native Americans.” She explained: “InCanada, we did many rituals to find many levels of yourself; and the round nose plays a real role. You don’t just put it on, you have to breathe and open up your inner self, invite all your ‘clown gods.’
“What is a clown god?” I asked. “When the teacher, Sue Morrison, told me about the clown gods,” she recalled, “I thought it was something from a Native American religion. I wasn’t sure at all, but then I understood that everybody has his or her own clown gods. If I visualize my grandma, my father, my teachers, the people who support me, I get energy from every one of them. So that works for me.”
I asked if her family has a tradition of clowning or performing; but no was the quick reply; and then out came a photo. It was of Albina standing beside her 100-year old grandmother, a thin lady with a powerfully intense look on her face, fully aware and fully proud. “She still dances,” Albina said, smiling, “She’s still singing in the choir, she’s still writing articles in the newspaper, and she’s still active in the pensions party, she does a lot of work and is very creative.” This lady is clearly an inspiration to Albina. “My grandma took care of me until I was about 10, I think that I get this energy of my grandma, I realized in the last years that I am connected to her. Sometimes when I go for a show, I take her picture with me.
“Sue always said: ‘We think that we choose to be a clown, but we are already chosen. You might try to change it, but if you are chosen by the clown gods to do this job, you cannot change it, you just will continue to do it.’ And that’s maybe true, because a few times, I stopped clowning for a very long time and then I come back without even realizing it, and then I say, oh, I’m doing it again. When I am not doing it, I do feel like something is missing.”
Another clown-god for Albina is her father with whom she is very close. She shared that when she was in the learning process inCanada, she felt a lot of strength coming from her father. “In the moments of my frustrations during improvisations, standing in front of disappointed and uncompromising teacher-director, who is demanding of you something you even don’t understand, my father was coming always in my mind like a spirit, I like to say ‘Angel’ with his unconditional love to me and his hug-trust! I really didn’t realise it then.”
SHE SHARED that in her last sessions with Sue, she told the audience about her father, saying: “My father doesn’t believe in any magic, any fairy tales, any fears. He is very practical man, who does very poetical things. My father dreams about rabbits. My father is very enthusiastic man. He is able to change his beliefs. He has the energy of someone who can reach very much. Because he can believe. Imagination! My father is a big dreamer and it’s a very funny way to dream. He can be like a child. He is a businessman and he is a child. He can enjoy trees, grass, cats or something just delicious and he can enjoy these things as something really very big. It’s the dream of many people to have this and he has it.”
Her show actually ends with homage to her dad, a lullaby of love and comfort given in the spirit of fatherhood. The Baba Yaga is a legend from Albina’s homeland of theUkraine. She, like everyone there, grew up with the fairy tales of this mythic witch, known as an angry, even terrifying, hag. In fact, from 12-14 years old, Albina was quite a celebrity for her Baba Yaga performances in a very professional Children’s Theatre inMariupol,Ukraine. This theatre demanded a fulltime commitment of a young person, with rehearsals several hours a day four days a week, no exceptions. The biggest time was at the New Year. “It was a big production. At that time, we didn’t have any Christmas because of the Soviet [government policies], so during the whole vacation, we did three shows a day every day for two weeks. I always played Baba Yaga in these shows, so it became like a part of me. But I played it very funny, and for that I became very famous in my city of almost one million people.” But then she finished school and left for studies and never came back to play the character which had made her so popular. She laughed, “I never did play Baba Yaga again, but I thought about it in my mind. That was fun and then I was really famous.”
THIS TRADITIONAL Baba Yaga character is not really what she does now. In fact, sometimes people fromRussia and the neighbouring countries get a little upset that she is calling this sad, pitiful little creature by the same name as the brutalizing witch they know so well. I couldn’t help but wonder if the role of Shrek as a scary ogre wasn’t some kind of parallel. Years later, under the tutelage of her mentor Sue Morrison, she began to discover her clown gods, to bring out her inner levels, out came her Baba Yaga from those early days in Marupol. She began to work with Morrison to create the show which eventually became “Baba Yaga,” but using that name was controversial. Sue wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Speaking of the director/teacher, Albina said, “She’s a very magic woman, she has some impulses from somewhere, she feels some things that she cannot explain.”
In the end, Albina had to decide on her own whether to call her show Baba Yaga or not, and as she performed it at art festivals inEurope, the name did baffle some audiences. “It’s very difficult to explain, but before St. Maarten, I myself didn’t really know [how to explain it]. When I performed it inVienna, nobody asked me about it; and inSloveniawhere they are very attached to Baba Yaga and are very conservative, they could not see this abstraction. They told me ‘we were waiting for 20 minutes to see Baba Yaga, and she never came out.’ We had many discussions about it there, to try to find out why is it so difficult for some people. So we were still discussing this when I was coming here.”
KLOOSHA, ALBINA’S clown persona, finally made the epiphany! As Kloosha did the show, she discovered that she is Baba Yaga. “Kloosha realized that for her, all her ego, her persuasions, all her pomposity, her neuroses and her guilt. She says, I’m so bad; I’m so mad; I can destroy all things, especially the things I love. She felt she is as bad as a Baba Yaga! So it was discovered that this Baba Yaga is very universal, everybody has a Baba Yaga inside. So now I understand how I can explain it to people.”
“This show is still in process, I don’t want it to mechanical. Klusha is nothing more than the most crazy version of myself, all my faces, but it’s what normally people don’t know. I am changing every moment and this is the work of the clown gods, you have to be open to it. If I go to Cirque du Soleil, it has to be very mechanical; it has to be very precise. It’s a different kind of clowning; there isn’t room for improvisation. In a way, it’s a step back, but to work for Cirque du Soleil, I would go for sure, it would be a wonderful opportunity to be a part of that.”
Catch “Baba Yaga, the fantastical-tragical clown show” at the Imbali centre in John Larmonie Centre in Philipsburg on Jan 28 at 8:00pm sharp. It may be your last chance to see it! Albina is also planning to teach some clowning classes at Imbali; so to get more info or to buy tickets, stop by the Imbali centre, Pete’s Photo, Van Dorp (Madame Estate and Simpson Bay), Top Carrot, L’esperance Hotel or Motiance dance school.Tickets are $15 each. For more about Albina/Klusha, visit www.klusha.blogspot.com
