Falling In Love, Estonian-style

Maybe I made fun of one too many people who made such dramatic claims, and karma decided it was time for a little payback. Or maybe the cosmic forces thought it would be fun to shake things up. Regardless, in August 2005, I attended a life-changing performance. Yes, it was an earth-shaking, mind-bending, [insert third cliché here] performance. EESTI: ballaadid (Estonian Ballads) premiered in August of 2004, and the final performance (which I attended) was a year later on 7 August. It was held in a large barn that had once been part of a Soviet collective farm; it was in the countryside near the Gulf of Finland on Estonia’s northern coast. I had come to know these back roads in rural Estonia fairly well, since during summer in Estonia my Estonian friends often took me with them during their frequent summer escapes from Tallinn (Estonia’s capital and most metropolitan city). It doesn’t require a great imagination to picture Estonia’s ancestors worshipping nature. Estonians adore their forests and countryside.

The barn was furnished with temporary bleachers, which were tightly packed with ticket-holders of this sold-out show. Though I was nearing the end of my two-month stay in Estonia, I hadn’t gotten used to the relative pre-show quiet at these events. The people around me were whispering, even though the lights were not dimmed and the show had not started. I had already read the English version of the show’s program a week before (which included translations of all the songs), but I flipped through it again as I waited for the performance to begin.

EESTI: ballaadid, a cantata-ballet, is considered the opus magnum of Veljo Tormis. Many Estonians call Tormis a genius. Using folktales from several regions in Estonia dating from the first decade of the 1900s through the 1970s, Tormis created a masterpiece that successfully and beautifully links the past with the present. As Mr. Tormis wrote in the program:

Not that I make use of folk song, folk song makes use of me. To me, folk music is not an instrument through which I can express myself. On the contrary, I feel it my duty to present folk music as it is: its essence, spirit, ideas and form. To my understanding, runo-song is the most outstanding and original phenomenon of Estonian culture. Today it has lost its form as it once existed, as an inseparable part of the ways of everyday life. What I am trying to do is to link it with modern art forms, and to bring out the uniqueness of runo-song and the message it conveys.

The runo-songs Tormis refers to are often short, repetitive choral pieces rooted in the Finno-Ugric tradition. Choral singing is still strong in Estonia, and the 15 EESTI: ballaadid singers were masterful. The music conductor was Tõnu Kaljuste (founder of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and a world-famous conductor), and the director was Peeter Jalakas of Von Krahl Theater. I’ve heard that Von Krahl Theater is Estonia’s avant-garde, radical theater, though EESTI: ballaadid is the only performance I’ve attended. Estonians either love or hate Von Krahl, as they use “rough” language and have off-the-wall interpretations of well-known plays.

The folktales in EESTI: ballaadid dealt with the timeless and often dark themes of rape, reproduction, family relationships, murder, and death. The lyrics (which you can read here) were primal, stark, impacting, and, of course, sung in Estonian. It is a language with many vowels that is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, similar to Finnish and related to Hungarian. It’s not like Slavic languages (Russian, for example), or its Baltic neighbor to the South (Latvian). There are just over 1 million Estonian speakers around the world. It is a beautiful-sounding language. The words seem to flow into each other, and the folk singing styles heighten the effect. One of the styles, regilaul, (which can be heard in this sound sample from the performance is comprised of 8-syllable verses sung by a primary singer and typically repeated by a secondary singer or group of singers. It is marked by alliteration, parallelism, and rich poetic and mythic language.

The dance performance was methodical and slow, but still quite intense thanks to the skill of the 11 dancers. The choreographer and leading dancer was Aki Suzuki, who is a Japanese Butoh specialist and the only non-Estonian to perform. The dance was essentially Butoh in style, and the dancers (and singers) were covered in white makeup and powder. The Butoh movements in this ballet were very subtle and controlled; sometimes it was amazing just how slow but still elegant the movements were. In spite of the modern Japanese origins of Butoh, I can see why it would appeal to Estonians, who are often methodical, deliberate, and quiet in nature.

All these sights and sounds created a dreamlike experience. The clapping and whistling at the end of the performance faded to a collective murmur. I felt a unity with the rest of the audience; we were all a bit stunned as we stumbled to our cars. EESTI: ballaadid was like a dream with scary and dark moments that was nonetheless beautiful. But who can describe a dream, especially over a year later? All I can explain is that upon seeing that performance, I fell in love with Estonia. It’s why I was sad to return to the United States a few weeks later, and the main reason I moved to Tallinn from Florida six months ago. Of course there were other good reasons too, but it is absolutely true that the cantata-ballet by Tormis changed my life. And to that I say, thank God for karma.

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View more photos of the performance at VonKrahl.ee

Listen to sound samples at EESTI:balladid

Read about Language and Poetic Metre in Regilaul

Read about Quantity and Stress in Estonian Folksong Performance