RAGE. WEEP. REJOICE.
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* UPDATE: THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT *
Saturday, November 18th, 11:30am - 1:30pm. Sliding scale: $25-$45.
Waterline Studio: 55 NE Farragut St, Portland OR.
*Spaces are limited, so please reserve early.*
If you would like to attend but the pricing is prohibitive for any reason, please contact me directly.
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Part feral catharsis, part dance party - this is a 1.5 hour structured women’s workshop where we will scream, cry, and dance our way back to power.
Open to all women, baba yagas, kikimoras, and interdimensional forest hags. Come of your own free will (this is important), but please leave your chicken-leg huts and mortars outside. For ages 18+.
If this is your first time attending “Dances from Baba Yaga’s Post-Soviet Kingdom,” please scroll down to read the full workshop details below.
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ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP
Do you crave a space where you can simply be, without having to filter or hold back
the full range of your emotions?
Are you hungry to dance, and let the music guide you back to your own
deep resilience and wisdom?
“Dances from Baba Yaga’s Post-Soviet Kingdom” offers an intentional container for embodied emotional release - think of it like an ecstatic dance, but with greater intensity, depth, and focus. Drawing on the rich musical traditions and contemporary remixes from Eastern Europe, Central and Northeast Asia, this workshop offers a carefully structured expressive arts container that invites the full emotional range of our beings.
We begin with a short opening circle, some guidelines, and a series of physical and vocal warm-up exercises. We then dance through three distinct emotional, physical, and musical realms: RAGE, GRIEF, and JOY. We conclude with a guided cool down, time for private reflection and integration, and a closing circle.
There is a very specific dress code for this event that is important for getting the most of your experience:
1) Please wear two layers that you can move in easily. Specifically:
A light red, pink, or white underlayer, such as shorts and sports bra (pink is also ok)
Thin dark overlayer that is easy to remove, such as sweat pants, hoodie or sweater (dark colors only)
If you do not have a dark overlayer, large black plastic trash bags will be provided.
2) Please bring soft pillows that you can punch and throw without worrying about them getting damaged. 1-2 pillows minimum, more is better.
3) Please bring a water bottle, a journal and something to write on.
Questions? Please contact me directly.
The idea for this workshop was born as part of a larger project with a similar title, and my own need to move through intense emotion that defies languages and cultural constructs. The format is inspired by Mama Gena’s Swamping Exercise , my training in butoh, and Eastern European folklore.
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“This event was absolutely beautifully facilitated: perfectly curated music, narrative rich in imagery, powerful dress code. I was able to relinquish fear and present authentically, tapping into my inner range of emotions and allowing myself to feel, dance, and scream like never before.
For that, I am immensely grateful to Natalya! She is a true master and a real gem for the Eastern European community of Portland. Thank you again, Natalya, for this experience!”
— Natasha Moody
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WHO IS BABA YAGA?
“Baba Yaga” by Ivan Bilibin from the fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” 1900
Baba Yaga (“Bah-bah Yah-gaah”) is a mythological figure found in Eastern European folklore, especially Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Sometimes a singular entity, sometimes three sisters, sometimes a multiplicity of beings, Baba Yaga is an ancient witch who resides deep in the wilderness.
Baba Yaga is a complex character with an ambiguous role in Eastern European stories: she may eat you alive, or she may save your life with an enchanted talisman or wise council. She is technically female, but often depicted with male attributes. She is known to reward brave hearts, hard workers and clever thinkers; and to punish those who are prideful, lazy, and weak-willed. Her magical power extends beyond the edges of time, and she is said to control the Thread of Life itself. Baba Yaga’s home is an intelligent, autonomous hut on chicken legs (“izbushka na kuri’ih noshkah”), and her primary mode of transportation is a flying mortar and pestle.
She has crept into modern American consciousness via books such as Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with Wolves, Taisia Kitaiskaia’s Ask Baba Yaga, and various films, TV series, comics, and videogames.
Baba Yaga is rising a defiant contemporary symbol of resourcefulness, matriarchal wisdom, queerness, and empowerment.
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WHY THE POST-SOVIET KINGDOM?
“Baba Yaga - Fairytales of the Russian Folk” by Nikolai Bogatov, 1894
Baba Yaga’s Post-Soviet Kingdom refers to the liminal space inside our psyches that exists in-between ideologies, economic systems, geopolitical boundaries, and historical timelines.
This is the space between socialist utopian dreams and capitalist realities (or is it the other way around?) This is the space between imperialism and self-determination; creation and destruction. This is a space of paradox, crumbling walls, broken systems, and the ferocious songs of worlds colliding.
This is a space of re-building, re-wilding, re-imagining, and re-birth.
Like any fairytale realm, this Kingdom can be a place of healing, wonder, and joy - it can also be a treacherous terrain full of bewilderment, violence, and corruption.
The only way to traverse these lands safely is to first travel inwards, deep into the roots of the nervous system, where our spines have kept the dances our minds have long forgotten. It is here that we receive the wise council of the Old Crone herself - the bony, ancient Baba Yaga, She Who Knows, She Who Sees Beyond All.
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COVID PRECATIONS
Masks are optional. I will be providing hand sanitizer and masks to all who wish to use them. I also advise anybody who feels ill to stay at home and not participate in group activities to help keep our community healthy and safe.
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MEET YOUR INSTRUCTOR
My name is Natalya Kolosowsky (she/her.) I am an artist, facilitator, and educator. I am the founder and director of Shadow Tender - an interdisciplinary project and school of thought that invites you to dance with your demons through mask-making and creative expression.
I was born in Novosibirsk, Russia wherein I got kicked out of a Soviet kindergarden for convincing my entire class to jump around in a circle from bed to bed during naptime. I came of age in the Sonoran Desert, and was fortunate enough to discover the West Coast underground circus scene and participate in an annual large-scale community ritual for grief, celebration, and rebirth.
My teaching approach is informed by multiple things: the lived and ancestral wisdom of my own lineages (Eastern European, Jewish, and Evenk/Indigenous Siberian); a life-long obsession with fairytales; over three decades of experience in dance and creative expression; two decades of yoga practice; and formal training in visual arts and the psychology and neuroscience of trauma.
I hold a BS in Psychology and a BFA in Visual Communication from the University of Arizona, as well as a MFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Oregon. I am also currently becoming a certified Buteyko breathwork instructor via Patrick McKeown’s Buteyko Clinic International. My work has been presented in universities, conferences, museums, and theaters around the world.
I am fluent in English and Russian, and offer 1:1 work, teaching, and group facilitation in both languages.
You can learn more by visiting www.shadowtender.com or follow me on Instagram @natalya_chaos
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This event would not be possible without the generous support of:
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HONOR YOUR TEACHERS
RESPECT YOUR ANCESTORS
My work was developed across a variety of spaces - intellectually, temporally, and geographically - which is itself an enormous privilege.
No teacher, no ancestor is perfect or without flaw, yet a constellation of teachers can begin to weave clearer and clearer paths for inquiry shaped by integrity, curiosity, and greater self-awareness. As such - both here, and throughout my workshops - I openly credit and honor those whose work has become a foundation for my teaching methodology:
Shadow Tender collaborators and co-teachers: Maria Thomas, Magdalena Kaczmarska, and Adam Cooper-Terán
Eastern European folk dance traditions, especially from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine as taught by Nadia Zubkov and others
Eastern European and Central Asian folklore and fairytales as passed through oral and written traditions
The teaching methodology, academic guidance, and insights of La Donna Forsgren, Les Gray, Theresa May, and Alexandra Bonds
The research of Spee Kosloff, Jeff Greenberg, and other scholars of Terror Management Theory
The writings and scholarly research of Judika Illes
The breathing methodologies of Konstantin Buteyko as taught by Patrick McKeown
The teachings of butoh artists Diego Piñon, Hiroko & Koichi Tamano, Yumiko Yoshioka, and others
The communication strategies taught by Kasia Urbaniak and Ruben Flores Montenegro
The teachings & writings of Marshall Rosenberg and his theory of Nonviolent Communication
The psychodramatic approaches of Alejandro Jodorowsky
The research of Peter Levine and Somatic Experiencing
The original writings and theories of Carl G. Jung
I stand in deep reverence and solidarity with the occupied lands and its indigenous communities on which this teaching curriculum has been developed over the years: Chinook, Kalapuya, O’Odham, Pima, and Lenape.