DASH ARTS DACHA to Bring Enchanted Performance Space to Rich Mix This Summer

Dash Arts presents a month-long enchanted performance space, modelled on the iconic Russian summer house set within the revolutionary turmoil of 1917. The Dacha acts as a backdrop and set for a whole series of different performances, delving into life in 1917 through the eyes of the Popov family dacha in Vyritsa, several hours outside Petrograd.

Dash Arts Dacha will play at Rich Mix, 35-47 BethnAl Green Road, London E1 6LA, running 12th June - Tuesday 11th July 2017.

This residence at Rich Mix enables Dash Arts to explore, in depth, the period starting in Spring 1917, just after the abdication of the Tsar - his portrait remains on the wall in the dacha as the Popovs haven't worked out whom to replace him with. Slowly the residency will move through the year towards the October Revolution. Content will change as will the icons on the wall. On 9th July, Lenin will be firmly in residence.

Josephine Burton, Artistic Director comments, Several years ago, Dash Arts was invited to Latitude Festival. Tania Harrison, the festival programmer, was keen that we brought some element of our work in the Post Soviet States to the wondrous mix of performance, music, theatre and play that she and her colleagues create each summer. As she described the location of her Faraway Forest, in the woods, removed from the thoroughfare of the main festival drag, I pictured the wooded landscapes and dappled light of the Russian and Post Soviet films and images that i was currently steeped in and suggested that we created a Russian country house, a Dacha, for their Forest. The Dacha became the vessel for our experiments and performance.

The ever-changing daily programme of Dash Arts Dacha will feature live music, films, food, fevered discussion with special guest speakers, plays, and DJs, drawing on a century of Russian music and culture. All served with tea from the samovar and vodka from the bar.

Spend the weekends experiencing a rural Russian summer with live music from superb UK-based artists originally from the Post Soviet States including Belarusian punk rocker Sasha Ilyukevich and His Highly Skilled Migrants, the superb Mazaika Duo, Polina Proutskaya and her folk ensemble Izba Voices, Polina Shepherd and the London Russian Choir, and Ukrainian singers Elena Dana and Iryna Muha.

Alternatively, join the Dacha family to bring some classic plays and texts to life through impromptu performance where audiences are invited to pick up scripts and take part. A selection of films will be shown on the Dacha home movie screen including Andrey Zvyaginstsev's Oscar-nominated Leviathan., Alexander Sokoruv's Russian Ark and the 6-hour epic And Quiet Flows the Don on Thursday 22nd June.

On the evening of Saturday 1st July, the Dacha will stay open all night as part of the Art Night event taking place throughout Whitechapel. Experience an all-night performance of Ten Days That Shook The World - a first-hand account of the October, 1917 revolution interspersed with screenings of award-winning films Reds and October, live music sets, DJs and an early morning breakfast for those that last the night.

East 15 Acting School will also take up a residency at Dacha; join the MA/MFA Theatre Directors for open rehearsals of newly devised plays, verbatim theatre and long-form improvisation - all accompanied by the bubble of the samovar in the unique ambience of our Dacha installation. They will draw inspiration from the wealth of Russian literature and Folk tradition from early history through to Pushkin.

Dash Arts Dacha is produced by Dash Arts and curated by co-Artistic Directors, Josephine Burton and Tim Supple and designed by Bryan Woltjen. Packed with musicians, actors, activists and thinkers, it has played to rave reviews at Latitude Festival, British Library, Wandsworth Arts Fringe and Rich Mix.

The Dacha forms part of REVOLUTION17 an explosion of performance by artists from across the Post Soviet States.

To view the full schedule see, www.dasharts.org.uk/events/dashartsdacha.html.

IF YOU GO:

Dash Arts Dacha

Monday 12th June - Tuesday 11th July 2017

At Rich Mix, 35-47 BethnAl Green Road, London E1 6LA

How to get there The nearest tube stations are Liverpool Street (Central, Hammersmith & City, District and Metropolitan lines), Old Street (Northern line), BethnAl Green (Central line) and Aldgate East (Hammersmith & City, District lines). Shoreditch High Street station (London Overgound) is just around the corner.