Siberia At The Centre Of The World: Music, Dance, And Ritual In Sakha-Yakutia And Buryatia

Siberian music and dance is little known outside Russia, in academic accounts too often considered as merely an easterly extension of European Russia or a northerly extension of East Asia, or experienced both onstage and in audio or audio visual recordings as part of an exoticized “Other”. Here, filmed and directed by Misha Maltsev and Keith Howard, we illustrate the colour and vitality of cultural production in the region. We include a large variety of voices – ritualists, musicians, dancers, administrators, academics, and audiences young and old. Filmed in June 2001 and July 2006, this documentary (in two parts) includes footage of two key festivals, the Sakha Ysyakh and Buryat Altagarna, solo and ensemble performances and interviews with staff at the East Siberian Academy of Arts, and vignettes on the khomus in Sakha-Yakutia, the Old Believers (Semeiskie) in Buryatia, shamanism in both Republics as it is remembered, revived, and given within ritual practice, and more.